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ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON 




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ALFRED 

LORD TENNYSON 

A STUDY OF HIS LIFE 
AND WORK 



BY 



ARTHUR WAUGH 



B.A. OXON. 



THIRD EDITION 



NEW YORK 
CHARLES L. WEBSTER & COMPANY 

1894 






Gift 
W- L. 8ho°maker 
7 S '08 



TO 
AUSTIN DOBSON 



1 Even the gods must go : 
Only the lofty Rhyme 

Not countless years oerthrcnv 
Not long array of time. 1 



PREFACE 

This volume was completed, all but the last page of bio- 
graphy, when the sudden illness of Lord Tennyson startled 
me at the task of minute revision, which I had hoped might 
long be my pleasant occupation. Such as it is, the book has 
been my companion during the last two years, and grew into 
shape as the natural result of a love for the poetry, and a desire 
to possess in convenient shape all that could be recorded of 
the life of one whom I regarded with sincere enthusiasm. 

In process of time, no doubt, a life of Lord Tennyson will 
be written, based upon material which at the present moment 
is in the possession of the family. The present volume does 
not pretend to be the official life of the late Poet Laureate, 
and expressly deprecates the supposition that it is built upon 
any but public data ; nevertheless it will not be found to be 
altogether devoid of novelty. Perhaps I may claim to have 
searched more patiently and widely than any of my prede- 
cessors for every available record ; and I certainly have left 
no important source of likely information untested. It is my 
hope, therefore, that without trespassing upon any one's 
privacy, or committing any act of literary indiscretion, I have 
been successful in making a study of Lord Tennyson more 



x PREFACE 

complete, more detailed, and, I hope, more accurate than any 
at present in the possession of the public. 

I must acknowledge, in the first instance, the kind help and 
sympathetic interest of Mr. J. Dykes Campbell, who generously 
placed at my disposal his valuable collection of Tennysoniana ; 
and, secondly, of Mr. Austin Dobson, who has not only en- 
couraged me in my task, but has allowed me to attach his 
name to this volume. 

I also desire to express my indebtedness to Mr. W. Aldis 
Wright's Life a?id Letters of Edward Fit 2 Gerald, and Mr. T. 
Wemyss Reid's Life, Letters, and Friendships of Richard 
Monckton Milnes, First Lord Houghton, from which much 
valuable information has been gathered. 

The second and third editions have been amplified by 
several personal notes for which I am indebted to the kindness 
of Mr. Frederick Locker-Lampson, Professor F. T. Palgrave, 
Dr. A. H. Japp, and other friends. 

Other aid and other encouragement, which I had hoped 
to acknowledge, must here be left, by promise, to the more 
difficult tribute of silence. 

ARTHUR WAUGH. 

October 1893. 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 

CHAPTER I 



LINCOLNSHIRE 



CHAPTER II 

CAMBRIDGE ...... 20 

i 

CHAPTER III 

LITERARY TROUBLES AND ARTHUR HALLAM'S DEATH 43 

CHAPTER I 

EARLY YEARS IN LONDON . . . -57 

CHAPTER V 

THE BEGINNINGS OF FAME .... 75 

CHAPTER VI 

FROM THE PRINCESS TO IN MEMORIAM . 84 

CHAPTER VII 

MAUD . . . • • .105 

CHAPTER VIII 

IDYLLS OF THE KING . . . . .127 



xii CONTENTS 

PAGE 

CHAPTER IX 

FROM THE IDYLLS TO THE DRAMAS . . 142 

CHAPTER X 

QUEEN MARY AND HAROLD .... IJ2 

CHAPTER XI 

THE FALCON AND THE CUP . . . . 189 

CHAPTER XII 

THE PROMISE OF MAY AND BECKET . . 202 

CHAPTER XIII 

FROM TIRESIAS TO DEMETER . . 2l8 

CHAPTER XIV 

THE CLOSING YEARS ..... 231 

CHAPTER XV 

THE VOICE OF THE AGE . . . .244 

INDEX ....... 253 



ILLUSTRATIONS 



PAGE 

Portrait of Lord Tennyson, after G. F. Watts, R.A. Frontispiece 

(By permission of the Proprietors of Black and White.) 

Somersby Rectory ...... 3 

Somersby Church ...... 5 

Holywell Glen . . . . . . .9 

Bridge Street, Louth . . . . . .11 

Westgate Place, Louth . . . . . .12 

Tennyson's Rooms, Corpus Buildings, Cambridge . . 20 

Hallam'' s Rooms, New Court, Trinity .... 22 

Clevedon Church ...... 56 

Fireplace in the Cock Tavern ..... 63 

In the Garden at Swainston .... 86 

Exterior of Shiplake Church ..... 90 

Interior of Shiplake Church ..... 93 

Shiplake Rectory . . . . . -95 

The Hallam Metnorial Tablet . . . . .101 

Hon. Hallam and Lionel Tennyson, after G. F. Watts, R.A. 107 

Farringford {front view) . . . .Ill 

The * Maud ' Cedar at Swainston . . . .117 

Facsimile of MS. from ( Gar -eth and Lynette* . . . 141 

Lady Tennyson, after G. F. Watts, R.A. . . . 152 

' The Quarried Downs of Wight' . . . .158 

Aldworth, Surrey . . . . . .167 

Farringford (back view) . . . . .181 

Facsimile Letter . . . . . .211 

Portrait of Lord Tennyson . . . . .213 

(By permission of Messrs. Cameron' and Smith.) 
Tennyson V Bridge, Farringford . . . .233 



ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON 



CHAPTER I 

LINCOLNSHIRE 

The study of a life and work, the beginnings and growth 
of which, while they lie beyond our own memory, are still 
w r ithin the limits of present report, is beset with many 
difficulties. Reminiscences and sentiments which are 
purely personal stand in the way of clear judgment ; trivial 
anecdotes, often half or wholly untrue, are still in the air, 
and the voices of sound and unsound criticism are too 
closely blended for an unprejudiced view of the position 
which the author's work will ultimately attain. But apart 
from these difficulties, which are common to all studies in 
contemporary literature, a life of Alfred Tennyson is made 
the harder to write by his own discouragement of the 
attempt. Once or twice in the history of letters the 
situation has repeated itself. Shakespeare's ' Cursed be 
he who moves my bones,' Thackeray's 'Let there be none 
of this nonsense about me after my death,' Gordon's 
1 Better be dead than praised,' and Tennyson's ' My Shake- 
speare's curse on clown and knave who will not let his 
ashes rest,' are expressions of an identical feeling, coloured 
a little differently by the variety in the temperament of the 
speakers. Such a sentiment may, one feels, be uttered with 
all sincerity at the moment, yet with no intention of giving 
it the weight and authority of an ultimatum; still the 
sentiment, once written 'down, remains to confront the 
biographer at the outset. Reflections and memories of 
this kind have filled the present w r riter with a very genuine 
diffidence in undertaking a work which reverent affection 
has made in every sense a labour of love. 

A 



2 ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON 

For, before he can write a word about Tennyson, he is 
bound to excuse himself for writing about him at all, and 
to make his peace w T ith that implacable deprecation of ' the 
irreverent doom of those that wear the poet's crow r n.' The 
cause might be pleaded in many ways. The writer could, 
perhaps, defend his right to speak on the ground of his 
intention in speaking; he could maintain that what has 
been written, though it might indeed be worthier, has been 
written in no spirit of irreverent paragraph-making, no 
desire to rush in where better taste would shrink to tread, 
but with every instinct of respect and veneration. The 
case could conceivably be stated so. But the present 
writer prefers to keep the inconsiderable shadow 7 of himself 
in the background, and to base his excuse not on his own 
treatment of the life, but on the very nature of the life 
itself. There are lives which require much tact in the 
writing, much weighing of what shall be said and what left 
unsaid, much veiling of ugly scars, much concealment of 
deformities. It is not so with Tennyson. His life has 
been so peaceful, so far removed from the smoke and stir 
of the world of petty aims and narrow ambitions, so free 
from passages to be passed over in silence, and events to 
be excused, that nothing, it seems, but grossly bad taste or 
hopelessly incorrect judgment on the part of the writer, 
could cause him to offend seriously in his work. And he 
can scarcely be condemned as too sanguine, who trusts at 
least to escape an accusation of such faults as these. 

The life of Tennyson remains to be written. Materials 
must exist which are at present inaccessible to any but the 
poet's nearest relatives ; the few who were privileged to 
know him intimately have, no doubt, much to tell of him 
that must here be left untold. The present work makes no 
claim — indeed, it could ill afford to do so — to give a 
detailed and finished portrait, or even an exact epitome 
of events. Yet, until an authoritative biography be forth- 
coming, there must, we hope, be some who would wish to 
know a little more of a life, the high thought, earnestness, 
and love of which are so clearly written in the work it leaves 
behind it. For such readers, what reverence and sincere 
admiration could do has been done in the present pages. 



4 ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON 

Of the many temptations to artifice and ingenuity which 
beset the biographer, none is more alluring than the charm 
of insisting upon the influence which the surroundings of 
childhood exercise upon the after life. It is so easy to 
draw parallels and trace tendencies, and to appear rather 
clever in the process of so doing, that one is apt to forget 
that this is nothing but fancy after all, and that Truth is 
not found on these surface-levels. Lives which become 
crowded with events in the period immediately following 
childhood are not greatly moved by the earliest influences 
of all. The power of childhood over later years belongs 
rather to uneventful lives, and Tennyson's was just the kind 
of life to fall under its spell. The character and scenery 
of his home-life had a more than ordinary share in his 
development, for he lived in its immediate neighbourhood, 
in daily familiarity with the 'grey hillside/ 'the seven elms 
and poplars four,' the brook and ' the ridged wolds,' for the 
first twenty years of his life : the period, in short, during 
which impressions are most vivid, and the mind readiest to 
receive them. The influences of the home-life and home- 
scenery set their mark upon him very early, and never left 
him. More than forty years after Tennyson went up to 
Cambridge, his friend FitzGerald could trace them in ' The 
Last Tournament,' in a description of a wave spending 
itself upon the shore. * That w r as Lincolnshire, I know,' 
FitzGerald wrote. 

It was in Lincolnshire, at Somersby Rectory, that Alfred 
Tennyson w r as born, on Sunday, August 6, 1809. His 
father, the Rev. George Clayton Tennyson, LL.D., held 
this living, to w r hich he w r as appointed in 1807, in connection 
with those of Grimsby and Bag Enderby; his mother was 
a daughter of the Rev. Stephen Fytche, Vicar of Louth, 
the town in which Alfred's school-days were afterwards 
passed. Somersby itself is but a tiny village; in 1821 there 
were sixty-two inhabitants in all. Alfred was one of twelve 
children, seven of whom were sons, Frederick and Charles 
(afterwards Charles Tennyson Turner), poets both, being 
his seniors. The home and its surroundings were full of a 
picturesque charm. The Rectory is a rather low, two- 
storeyed building, on one side separated from the road by 



LINCOLNSHIRE 



5 



a narrow drive, upon the other faced by a mossy lawn with' 
a stretch of meadow-land beyond. A quaint old-fashioned 
dining-hall, with mediaeval windows, built by the poet's 
father, extends the house to the right, as one looks up at 
the Rectory from the lawn. It was in this hall that the 
family was wont to gather on winter evenings for round 




SOMERSBY CHURCH. 



games and conversation. On the north a straggling road 
winds up the steep hill towards the summit of the wold, 
while on the south a pebbly brook babbles along close to 
the edge of the garden. Not at all the sort of scenery one 
associates with the fen-country : instead of dreary waters 
and low-lying levels, the landscape sweeps up into hills and 
drops into valleys, full of the sights and sounds of country- 



6 ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON 

life, and rich in flowery hollows and patches of tangled 
meadow-land. It requires no strain of imagination to catch 
the spirit of Tennyson's song here, where the little brook of 
his poem dances along through the heart of the country, 
chattering as it goes, while not far from Somersby the 
traveller is shown an old, half-ruined grange which fancy 
dreams over as the probable original of Mariana's prison. 

The process of identification, however, has led more 
than one writer into difficulties. Poetry is not always 
inspired by its surroundings. * Break, break, break,' for 
instance, has been generally ascribed to the influence of 
Clevedon. But we have Tennyson's own denial. * It was 
made,' he said, 'in a Lincolnshire lane at five o'clock in 
the morning.' 

Such, among these Lincolnshire lanes, was the poet's 
home, and from stray allusions here and there we get 
glimpses of the inmates of the Rectory itself. The father 
was a man of many interests, something of a poet and an 
artist, much of a scholar and a linguist, and, above all, of 
powerful physique. The poet's mother was of a sweet and 
tender disposition. A story is told of village roughs who 
traded on her gentleness by beating their dogs within 
hearing of the Rectory windows, in hope of a 'tip' to 
induce them to spare the unfortunate victims of their greed. 
A combination of the parents' qualities often reappears in 
the children, and it seems only natural to trace to the 
father's influence the power and energy of ' Maud ' and 
'The Idylls,' to the mother's the tender passion of 'In 
Memoriam ' and ' The Princess.' 

Such specious fancies are, perhaps, a little too artificial 
to be insisted upon with any freedom ; but much of the 
poet's earlier life has to be left to conjecture and imagination 
of one kind and another; for the actual, palpable facts that 
come to hand are very meagre indeed. Still the few there 
are have value. Mrs. Richmond Ritchie, in a delightfully 
picturesque paper published some years since in Harper's 
Magazine, and since reprinted in book-form, gives us a 
glimpse of Alfred Tennyson when he was no more than 
five years old. She tells of him caught and swept along 
by the wind down the Rectory garden, crying as he was 



LINCOLNSHIRE 7 

hurried past : ' I hear a voice that 's speaking in the wind.' 
It was his first line of poetry, and the idea was not to leave 
him with the moment. The sound of the storm has always 
had a voice for Tennyson, as clear in later years as when it 
first whispered to his babyhood. The miserable mother in 
'Rizpah' catches ' Willy's voice in the wind;' Arthur, 
sleeping before his last battle, hears the ghost of Gawain 
shrilling through the wandering wind : ' Hollow ! Hollow, 
all delight!' To the nurse in 'The Children's Hospital' 
the voice of the wind blends mysteriously with { the mother- 
less bleat of a lamb in the storm and the darkness without.' 
One cannot help fancying — nor is it, perhaps, too curious 
a fancy — that this story of his childhood, told to the poet 
afterwards, has recurred to him, half unconsciously, when 
from time to time his mind was dwelling on the idea of 
storm and tumult. The wind has always had a voice that 
speaks to him; as every common sight and sound of 
nature has spoken to him, and inspired him with a new 
interpretation. 

A story of this kind now and again seems to show the 
bent of his mind ; but in the nursery and schoolroom days 
Alfred was not the most prominent member of the family. 
A retiring and reserved disposition, rare in children, 
rendered him comparatively unattractive ; and Charles, 
who, though a year his senior, was much more boyish and 
high-spirited, naturally had qualities which were quicker to 
make friends for him. Charles was, indeed, a universal 
favourite; and a story told of the two brothers seems to 
indicate that, with all his youthful spirits, he actually 
developed the earlier of the two. One Sunday, when the 
rest were going to church, Charles suggested that Alfred 
should fill up the time by writing some poetry, giving him 
as a subject the flowers in the Rectory garden. By the 
time the service was finished Alfred had filled his slate with 
verses, which he hastened to submit to his brother's 
criticism upon his return. Their attitude to each other, 
the mutual relation of poet and critic, shows, as Mr. H. J. 
Jennings has shrewdly remarked, that Charles was regarded, 
at any rate by his younger brother, as the cleverer of the 
two. 



8 ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON 

These verses on the garden flowers were not Alfred's 
only attempt at youthful poetry. The next time he essayed 
verse his grandfather was the task-master, and the subject 
the death of the poet's grandmother. For this first 'In 
Memoriam' the critic slipped half a sovereign into the 
boy's hand, with the remark — just a little like a snub, — 
4 That is the first money, my boy, that you've made by 
poetry ; and — take my word for it — it will be the last ! ' 

To those who are rich in the wisdom that comes after 
the event, the sentence sounds like a text for a little sermon 
on the futility of prophecy. 

A piece of verse, ' On the Death of my Grandmother/ 
occurs in Poems by Two Brothers, and this, no doubt, was 
an emended version of the early effort. It opens quietly, 
and with a certain sober dignity : 

* There on her bier she sleeps ! 
E'en yet her face its native sweetness keeps. 
Ye need not mourn above that faded form, 
Her soul defies the ravage of the worm ; 
Her better half has sought its heavenly rest, 
Unstain'd, unharm'd, unfetter'd, unopprest ; 
And far above all worldly pain and woe, 
She sees the God she almost saw below.' 

By this time the application to poetry had become con- 
tinuous. Between his eleventh and twelfth birthdays 
Alfred wrote an epic poem of some four or five thousand 
octosyllabic lines in the manner of Sir Walter Scott ; and 
three years later he was busy upon a drama in iambics, a 
chorus from which was afterwards printed in Poems, chiefly 
Lyrical. These early excursions into poetry were much 
more ambitious than the work to which he applied himself 
during his Cambridge Terms; but the young mind is 
always blind to difficulty. 

The children do not seem to have played many games 
in the old Rectory garden, which must have been very quiet 
in the dreamy summer afternoons. At that time cricket 
was not in full vogue ; football was even less popular. A 
kind of ' King of the Castle J seems to have been the boys' 
favourite game ; they found scope in it, perhaps, for fancy 
and imagination beyond the mere pleasure of the exercise. 



LINCOLNSHIRE 



Another imaginative game is related in Frederick Tenny- 
son's letters as having enlivened his aunt's garden. ' I and 
Charles and Alfred,' he says, ' enthusiastic children, used 
to play at being emperors of China, each appropriating a 
portion of the old echoing gardens as our domain.' In the 
evening they told long stories round the fire, and Alfred — 






- ■/&■"• 



23W 



team -«. 




HOLYWELL GLEN 







in amusing contrast to the quintessential narrative of his 
prime — is reported to have spent months in the recital of 
his tale— ' The Old Horse.' The prolixity was to pass with 
boyhood; it is said that, in after years, he pronounced 
4 Mr. Sludge the Medium' terribly long-winded, adding, 
' I 'd have done the thing in a third of the space.' 

Meanwhile, the lessons were not neglected. Every day 



io ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON 

the boys walked to Cadney's village school in Holywell 
Glen, a deep, shady nook, enshrining the well which 
tradition magnified into a second Pool of Bethesda. Alfred, 
we learn, was ill at numbers ; and one of his school-fellows, 
a little his senior, earned many a tip from the Rector of 
Somersby by coaching the future poet in his mathematics 
after school-hours. They must have made an easy-going, 
rather primitive, and very picturesque life, these early days 
in Lincolnshire. Bird-nesting on bright spring mornings, 
rambles by the brook on summer half-holidays to Stock- 
worth, Harrington, or Scrivelsby, gradual familiarity with 
all the life and growth of the countryside — these were the 
earliest influences that touched the children of Somersby 
Rectory, and inspired that harmony of mind with Nature 
which was afterwards to prove so distinctive a characteristic 
of the Laureate's verse. 

1 Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean, 
Tears from the depth of some divine despair, 
Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes, 
In looking on the happy Autumn-fields, 
And thinking of the days that are no more.' 

It needed many years of communion with Nature to give 
voice to that feeling, that sense of something wanting, that 
stir of sweet regret that is so easily invoked by the sight of 
these Scenes of loneliness : but the early days at Somersby 
helped him to that sympathy with Nature which ripened to 
maturity in his later verse. 

And so one hesitates to pass too rudely over the days of 
this childhood ; for, uneventful as they were, they were at 
work all the while on the fibre of the poet's spirit. The 
spirit was a little too solitary, no doubt, a little too shy and 
over-reserved : it would have been better for Alfred 
Tennyson, perhaps, if he had gone early to a great public 
school and mixed more with action, — fallen sooner into the 
rush and swirl of life, and had less time to dream. For his 
school-days seem to have been unusually free from excite- 
ment. Cadney's village school was followed by Louth 
Grammar School, where Alfred went as a new boy in 
the Christmas term of the year after Waterloo. Under 
Mr. Waite's mastership Louth was a drowsy little school ; 



LINCOLNSHIRE 



ii 



and the terms that Tennyson spent there seem to have 
brought very little with them to be remembered afterwards. 
Indeed, there appears to be but one solitary reminiscence 
of his school-days to record ; and, since it is the one story, 
it has been told over and over again, so often as to be 
scarcely worth re-telling. But where there is little, there 




BRIDGE STREET, LOUTH. 



can be no choice, and our single glimpse of this time must 
be the poet's own recollection of the festivities on the occa- 
sion of the coronation of George the Fourth, when he and 
the other boys were decked out in rosettes, and there were 
processions and merry-making. 

Alfred seems to have left Louth Grammar School after 
some four years with Mr. Waite, and was consequently not 



12 



ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON 



twelve years old when his school career finally closed. 
Mrs. Tennyson's mother, Mrs. Fytche, lived with her 
daughter, Miss Mary Anne Fytche, at Westgate Place ; and 

while Alfred 

was at Louth, 
his parents 
often came 
and stayed 
with their 
relatives, to 
be near him. 
When he left 
school he 
went home 
again to be 
under his 
father's tui- 
tion. The 
father was a 
strong, sen- 
sible man, 
withoutdoubt, 
full of inter- 
ests, and an ad- 
mirable com- 
panion for his 
sons ; but the 
continued pa- 
rental super- 
vision was a 
mistake. A 
boy of Alfred's 
sensitive and 
imaginative 
temperament 
needed to be 

more among his contemporaries and less by himself. How- 
ever, his parents thought otherwise ; he came home again, 
and during the next few years the brothers were together 
at Somersby. 




WESTGATE PLACE, LOUTH. 



LINCOLNSHIRE 13 

We learn enough of this period to feel that the studies 
must have been rather desultory, and the amusements 
simple enough. Their father's teaching was supplemented 
by the classics of a Roman Catholic priest and the music 
of a teacher at Horncastle. For half-holidays they had the 
endless pleasure of wild rambles over the country with 
their pipes in their mouths — for Alfred had begun to smoke 
already. An early love for the seashore was fostered by 
frequent visits to Mablethorpe, a small town in a flat 
country, where the sand slowly shifts into banks, and builds 
up a barrier between the sea and the fields. Here the days 
would be spent in much the same way as at Somersby — a 
little roaming about the shore, a little verse-making, and 
a good deal of dreaming. It was an idle time, but it had 
its interests. 

An affection for animal life was one of Alfred's earliest 
characteristics. One of the rooms on the second floor was 
set apart as his den, and here he would sit of an evening, 
pondering his verses. One night, as he leant from the 
window, he heard an owl hooting ; and, with a faculty for 
imitation which was strong in him, he cried back to the bird. 
The poet's ' tu-whit, tu-whoo ' was so natural that the owl 
flew to the window, and into the room, where it was captured 
and kept for a long while as a pet. Ingenuity has traced to 
this story the origin of the later poem ' The Owl,' which 
catches with singular fidelity an echo of the bird's cry. 

And if we try to take the character out of its sur- 
roundings, and to find for ourselves what manner of boy 
Alfred Tennyson was at this time, we get the clearest 
insight into his real nature in the anecdote, recorded by 
Mrs. Ritchie, that tells of the effect of Byron's death upon 
the household at Somersby. 

'Byron is dead \' The whole world seemed full of the 
cry : and the boy crept away to think its meaning out alone, 
and to cut 'Byron is dead!' into the sandstone. We get 
very close to the heart of the child here : the reserve with 
which he chooses to be by himself, his appreciation of the 
loss, and his record of it, carved with his knife in the stone, 
seem to show us the Alfred Tennyson of the moment very 
vividly indeed. There is the inclination to solitude on the 



i 4 ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON 

one hand, and the strength of sympathy and affection on the 
other, the two dissonant elements in that strange combina- 
tion which makes him such a powerfully interesting figure. 
He has had friends who have seen the one side only, and 
thought him brusque and unsociable; he has had other 
friends who have shut their eyes to this side of his character, 
and preferred to dwell on the tender and lovable element. 
But the true portrait must be frank and candid : and the 
subject is the more engaging for its contradictory com- 
plexity. The little Alfred, creeping off alone to engrave his 
poet's cenotaph, was a very perfect foreshadowing of that older 
Alfred who would be silent to his friends for years, and yet 
in any moment of their trouble send them the strengthening 
assurance of his tender sympathy. This was the Tennyson 
who, after long silence, wrote to his old friend, Lord 
Houghton, condoling with him upon his wife's death ; and 
wrote in such a strain as this : — 

' I was the other day present at a funeral here, and one of the chief 
mourners reached me her hand silently almost over the grave, and I as 
silently gave her mine. No words were possible : and this little note, 
that can do really nothing to help you in your sorrow, is just such a 
reaching of the hand to you, my old college comrade of more than 
forty years' standing, to show you that I think of you. ' 

But all this comparison has carried us a long way from 
the little boy sitting, knife in hand, by his boulder of sand- 
stone. There is little enough to record, however, of these 
years between Louth and Cambridge. Frederick went up 
to Trinity in 1827, and Charles and Alfred were left together 
at Somersby, living the same home-life — picking up some 
learning from books (the first volume of poems proves that), 
and more from Nature, — taking long walks across the 
country, vying with each other in poetry from time to time ; 
wanting nothing — save an occasional half-sovereign. 

For to many other excellent qualities (it is whispered), 
the Rector of Somersby added a talent for economy, and 
Charles and Alfred were never supplied with a surplus of 
pocket-money. Now and then, when money was needed 
for some excursion or other amusement, they were sorely 
put about to scrape together enough for their purpose ; and 
on one occasion, when they were discussing ways and means 



LINCOLNSHIRE 15 

in the saddle-room, they were overheard by the family 
coachman. Appreciating the position at once, and racking 
his brains for a plan, the servant bethought himself of the 
verses which his young masters were always writing, — they 
could not be much good, still they might serve. The idea 
pleased the boys : it opened a pleasant prospect of a road 
that led to both wealth and fame at once. They proceeded 
to make a collection of their best verses, and found they 
had quite enough for a respectable little volume. So, under 
the title of Poems by Two Brothers, with a quotation from 
Martial — ' Haec nos novimus esse nihil ' — on the title-page, 
the precious manuscript was submitted to Mr. Jackson, a 
bookseller of Louth, who offered the young poets ten 
pounds for the copyright of their work, a sum which, we 
now have it on authority, was subsequently doubled. Ten 
pounds was great riches to the brothers ; the bargain was 
struck, and Alfred Tennyson had begun his career as a 
poet. 

Poems by Two Brothers, now, in its original form, a very 
rare little volume, consists of 102 poems which occupy 228 
pages. Quotation and footnote abound, both Latin and 
English authors being cited with freedom. A reprint of 
the book was issued in the spring of 1893 by Messrs. 
Macmillan, and in this edition the separate poems were 
signed by the initials of their authors, so far as it had 
been found possible to assign each to its creator. In his 
preface to the book the present Lord Tennyson expressed 
his desire that none of the verses signed by his father's 
initials should be afterwards included in the collected 
works, — a desire which is amply justified by the necessary 
immaturity of the work. The poems show considerable 
facility, and have at intervals much melody and grace in 
their composition, but are too imitative to be of any real 
value from other than the biographical point of view. 

The young poets enter the field with a very boyish 
little piece of self-depreciation : 'We have passed the 
Rubicon, and we leave the rest to fate ; though its edict 
may create a fruitless regret that we ever emerged from 
"the shade" and courted notoriety.' Fate issued no 
special edict in their case, however : the volume attracted 



1 6 ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON 

scarcely any notice. It was improbable it should : for the 
work was inevitably immature. The poems (it is the habit 
of youthful verse) take to themselves a quaint assumption 
of sentiments and situations quite foreign to the experience 
of the writers. The young poets are continually projecting 
themselves into old age, and looking back upon their youth 
as a treasure that is lost to them. This is how they sing : 

' Memory ! dear enchanter ! 
Why bring back to view 
Dreams of youth, which banter 
All that e'er was true? 

* Round every palm-tree, springing 

With bright fruit in the waste, 
A mournful asp is clinging 
Which sours it to our taste. 

1 1 stand like some lone tower 
Of former days remaining, 
Within whose place of power 
The midnight owl is plaining.' 

And again : 

' The vices of my life arise, 

Pourtrayed in shapes, alas ! too true, 
And not one beam of hope breaks through 
To cheer my old and aching eyes. ' 

And in another place the poet is full of reflection upon the 
memory of youth as it recurs to age : 

* For youth — whate'er may be its petty woes, 

Its trivial sorrows — disappointments — fears, 
As on in haste life's wintry current flows — 

Still claims, and still receives, its debt of tears.' 

Indeed, the authors are very tolerant of sorrow : there is a 
little poem in praise of tears, and another of consolation ; 
and the latter is, perhaps, of all the verses, the nearest akin 
to Alfred Tennyson's later work : 

1 Why should we sorrow for the dead ? 

Our life on earth is but a span ; 
They tread the path that all must tread, 
They die the common death of man.' 

' Antony to Cleopatra ' is generally considered the most 



LINCOLNSHIRE 



17 



successful poem in the volume ; and it has unquestionably 
a share of fire and movement : 

* Then when the shriekings of the dying 

Were heard along the wave, 
Soul of my soul ! I saw thee flying ; 

I followed thee, to save. 
The thunder of the brazen prows 

O'er Actium's ocean rung ; 
Fame's garland faded from my brows, 

Her wreath away I flung. 
I sought, I saw, I heard but thee : 
For what to love was victory ? ' 

But the chief interest of the book lies in its evidence of the 
poetry which was most congenial to the taste of the young 
authors. A large proportion of the work is imitative, and 
the principal influence is Byron's. Here and there we 
catch echoes of Scott and Moore : 

' Oh ! Harp of my Fathers ! 

No more in the hall 
The souls of the chieftains 

Thy strains shall enthrall. 
One sweep will I give thee 

And wake thy bold swell ; 
Then, thou friend of my bosom, 

For ever farewell. ' 

And in another place : 

1 The low, dull gale can scarcely stir 
The branches of that blackening fir, 
Which betwixt me and heav'n flings wide 
Its shadowy boughs on either side, 
And o'er yon granite rock appears 
Its giant form of many years. 
And the shrill owlet's desolate wail 
Comes to mine ear along the gale, 
As, list'ning to its lengthen'd tones 
I dimly pace the Vale of Bones.' 

It is to Byron, however, that the brothers turn most 
readily for their inspiration ; and at times they catch his 
manner with a fidelity that is almost amusing : 
1 We meet no more — the die is cast, 
The chain is broke that tied us, 
Our every hope on earth is past, 

And there 's no helm to guide us : 
We meet no more — the roaring blast 
And angry seas divide us.' 
B 



18 ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON 

There is a touch of Byron here : but in the following there 
is more than a touch — it is a very palpable hit : 

* I saw thee, Bassorah ! in splendour retiring 

Where thy waves and thy walls in their majesty meet : 
I saw the bright glory thy pinnacles firing, 

And the broad vassal river that rolls at thy feet.' 

And even again : 

' Like the fiends of destruction they rush on their way, 
The vulture behind them is wild for his prey ; 
And the spirits of death, and the demons of wrath, 
Wave the gloom of their wings o'er the desolate path. 

For thy glory is past, and thy splendour is dim, 

And the cup of thy sorrow is full to the brim ; 

And where is the chief in thy realms to abide 

The M Monarch of Nations," the strength of his pride?' 

This selection, already too long, may fitly close with a 
quotation from a little poem of an easy melody and 
singularly individual touch : 

4 In Savoy's vales, with green array'd, 

A thousand blossoms flower, 
'Neath the odorous shade by the larches made, 

In their own ambrosial bower : 
But sweeter still, 

Like the cedars that rise 
On Lebanon's hill 

To the pure blue skies, 
Is the breath of the Maid of Savoy.' 

The volume apparently elicited but a single notice, in The 
Literary Chronicle and Weekly Review. But it was remem- 
bered in the neighbourhood and at the Grammar School, 
where Edward Eyre, entering as a new boy some two years 
later, heard that two of the old boys had published a book 
of poems, and had actually received ten pounds for the copy- 
right. It seemed a dazzling achievement to the new-comer. 
With this little publication the two brothers entered upon 
the literary life hand in hand. The money which the 
publication brought them was spent upon a tour around 
the Lincolnshire churches. And it is pleasant to remember 
that when, more than fifty years afterwards, Charles Tenny- 
son Turner's sonnets were collected into a volume, the book 



LINCOLNSHIRE 19 

was prefaced by a poem by his younger brother, recalling 
with a grateful memory this early effort together : 

1 When all my griefs were shared with thee, 

And all my hopes were thine — 
As all thou wert was one with me ; 
May all thou art be mine ! ' 

The interest of that first partnership of boyhood was not to 
be impaired by the successes and disappointments of the 
more memorable years to come. 



CHAPTER II 



CAMBRIDGE 



In October 1828, Charles and Alfred joined Frederick at 
Trinity College, Cambridge, where the eldest brother had 
already distinguished himself by winning Sir William Browne's 

medal for Greek 
verse, the subject 
of his composi- 
tion being 'Egypt.' 
The two younger 
brothers were, we 
learn from Pro- 
fessor C. V. Stan- 
ford, entered on 
the books on No- 
vember 9, 1827, 
and matriculated 
on February 20 of 
the following year. 
Alfred Tennyson 
first lived in Rose 
Crescent over a 
Tobacconist's 
shop; but at the 
end of their first 
year he and 
Charles moved 
to lodgings in 
Trumpington 
Street, next door 
to the gate of 
Corpus. Unused 
to the society of 
men of their own age, they were at first reserved and nervous 
to a degree that was almost painful. There is a story told 




TENNYSON S ROOMS, CORPUS BUILDINGS. 



CAMBRIDGE 21 

of them, that, starting for College with every intention of 
dining in Hall, they would often find their courage fail 
them when they saw the full tables and heard the buzz of 
conversation, and hurry back to their lodgings dinnerless. 
The late Master of Trinity, Dr. W. H. Thompson, we are 
told, was wont to say that it was on one such occasion, as 
Alfred Tennyson stood proud and shy at the doors of the 
lighted hall, that he noticed him for the first time, and 
asked a fellow-undergraduate his name. 

But though the shyness lived on, the solitude was broken 
through; and the brothers soon fell into a set of literary 
spirits, akin to themselves, many of whom were destined to 
more than ordinary prominence. KAmong the earliest of 
these new friends was the one who was to exert so pleasantly 
powerful an influence upon Alfred Tennyson's life, Arthur 
Henry Hallam himself. Hallam was nearly two years 
Tennyson's junior (he was born at Bedford Place in 
February 181 1), but in learning and experience he was 
undoubtedly the poet's better. He had travelled on more 
than one occasion into Germany and Switzerland, while his 
school-days had been passed at Eton, in vivid contrast to 
the drowsy education at Louth. At school he had read 
poetry with an eagerness that found especial satisfaction 
in Sappho, Lucretius, Catullus, Dante, Milton, Fletcher, 
Byron, Wordsworth, Shelley, and, above all, Shakespeare ; 
had taken an active part in the school debates, and had 
written in the Eton Miscellany several prize essays and a 
story in verse, the scene of which was laid among the 
Lakes of Killarney. After leaving school he had visited 
Italy with his parents, and came into residence at Trinity 
in October 1828, occupying rooms in the New Court. Such , 
is a formal summary of Hallam's early life, but it is the 
man himself who appeals to us more tenderly than his 
achievements. t As near perfection as mortal man can be,' 
said Alfred Tennyson : and the singular sweetness of his 
disposition seems to have left a keener impression on his 
contemporaries than all the lore and logic which he brought 
from the schools. Henry Alford shared Tennyson's en- 
thusiasm : ' His was such a lovely nature that life seemed 
to have nothing more to teach him.' With Hallam were 



22 



ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON 



many 
Tenny 



others, who soon became numbered in the list of 

r son's closest friends. Richard Monckton Milnes 

and R. C. Trench, W. H. Thompson (afterwards Master of 

Trinity)and J. 
W. Blakesley, 
F.D. Maurice, 
and James 
S p e d d i n g, 
Henry Alford, 
Charles Meri- 
vale, G. S. 
Venables, E. 
R. Kennedy, 
and E. Lush- 
ington were all 
members of 
the society 
known as 'The 
Apostle' at the 
time that Ten- 
nyson joined 
it. Thisasso- 
ciation ; started 
some eight 
years pre- 
viously, and 
limited to 
twelve mem- 
bers, was, and 
I believe is, a 
small debating 
society which 
has drawn to 
itself all the 
. - brightest liter- 

HALLAM S v ROOMS, NEW COURT, TRINITY. t> 

ary promise of 
the college. They held discussions : 

' A band 
Of youthful friends, on mind and art, 
And labour, and the changing mart, 
And all the framework of the land ; 




CAMBRIDGE 23 

And one would aim an arrow fair, 

But send it slackly from the string, 

And one would pierce an outer ring 
And one an inner, here and there ; 

And last the master bowman, he 

Would cleave the mark. A willing ear 
We lent him. Who but hung to hear 

The rapt oration flowing free 

From point to point with power and grace 

And music in the bounds of law, 

To those conclusions when we saw 
The God within him light his face?' 

Hallam was the foremost of Tennyson's friends, but in 
point of time he was not actually the first. On the very 
day on which he came up to Cambridge Tennyson was 
caught by a face which charmed him at first sight, and 
drew from him the remark : ' That looks the best-tempered 
fellow I ever saw.' ' The best-tempered fellow ' was Milnes, 
and the friendship whichTennyson coveted was soon realised. 

To Spedding's inspiration were due the lines : ' You ask 
me why, though ill at ease.' They are almost a version in 
metre of a speech made by Spedding on Political Unions 
at the Cambridge Debating Hall in 1832. His name is, of 
course, also connected with the beautiful poem in which 
Tennyson speaks of his father's death. 

There is a story told upon good authority which recounts 
the origin of the lines 'Vex not thou the Poet's mind.' It 
is said that at one of the meetings of ' The Apostles,' Tenny- 
son recited those strange and imaginative verses, 'The 
Kraken,' which have since been retained in his collected 
works. Blakesley, who w r as present, was a good deal 
amused by their eccentricity, and, at the conclusion of 
the recital, muttered something about ' boiled cod's head.' 
Tennyson took no notice at the time; but, when next 
the company met, he announced, in his gruff voice, 
that he had got ' a poem for Blakesley this time/ where- 
upon he read 'Vex not thou the Poet's mind,' to the in- 
tense amusement of the assembly. 

Tennyson, it is reported, never read a long paper to ( The 
Apostles ' himself. On one occasion he had prepared one 
on the subject of ' Ghosts ; ' but when the meeting was 



24 ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON 

assembled, his old shyness reasserted itself, and he tore the 
essay into pieces before them all, and threw the scraps into 
the fire. His prowess was to come to him through other 
channels. 

Poetry still held his heart of hearts. During his first 
year at Cambridge, he wrote the first two parts of ' The 
Lover's Tale,' which were printed in 1833, and then with- 
drawn from the press. He felt, as he tells us himself, ' the 
imperfection of the poem.' But a few copies, with many 
misprints to mar them, fell into the hands of one of his 
friends, who distributed them among Tennyson's Trinity 
associates without the poet's knowledge. To the survival of 
some of these copies and their subsequent piracy we owe 
the fact that some fifty years afterwards the Laureate 
published the whole poem in a revised form with a third 
part added. 'The Lover's Tale,' then, was suppressed; 
but in the meanwhile, Tennyson had been at work upon a 
poem which defied suppression. The subject of the 
Chancellor's Prize Poem for the year was ' Timbuctoo,' and 
three among the little body of Trinity friends were candi- 
dates for the University laurel. Milnes and Hallam were 
unsuccessful ; but Tennyson was declared the prizeman. 
His poem, it is said, was written at his father's instigation, 
and remodelled on ' The Battle of Armageddon,' a copy of 
verses which he had begun before going up to Cambridge. 
The poems were sent in in April, and the result of the 
competition was announced on June 6, 1829. Hallam's 
poem was printed at the time, and afterwards reprinted 
with Tennyson's in 1834 in a little volume of the Transac- 
tions of the Union Society, to which we shall have occasion 
to refer hereafter. The fame of prize poems is usually 
short-lived enough, but Tennyson's ' Timbuctoo' made quite 
a little stir. A review in The Athenazum of July 22, 
variously attributed to John Sterling and Frederick Maurice, 
declared, with rather extravagant eulogy, that it 'would 
have done honour to any man that ever wrote ; ' while 
Milnes, who afterwards quoted two lines from it as the 
motto for his prize essay on ' The Influence of Homer,' 
wrote to his father saying that it was ' equal to most pa:ts 
of Milton.' All this is high praise indeed, and gave reason 



CAMBRIDGE 



25 



to Trench's fear (expressed in a letter to W. B. Donne) 
that ' Cambridge might materially injure Tennyson ;' since 
4 no young man under any circumstances should believe 
that he has done anything, but should still be looking 
forward.' 

But Tennyson had done something in which he might, 
perhaps, rest some confidence. 'Timbuctoo' is quite 
unique as a specimen of prize poetry, which is apt to come 
from the author like a piece of machine-made embroidery, 
stiffly regular without a touch of art. At the very outset 
Tennyson threw aside conventionality. Poems sent in for 
the Chancellor's medal were invariably written in the heroic 
couplet, but ' Timbuctoo ' is in blank verse. It must have 
required some searchings of heart on the part of the 
examiners before they could break a custom and create a 
precedent. It must have needed some critical acumen, too, 
to have recognised in so unacademical an effort the ripening 
greatness of the poet. Their decision is interesting, and 
even remarkable. 

The poem, which occupied sixteen pages in its original 
form, opens with a description of the writer standing on a 
mountain overlooking the Mediterranean. His thought 
recurs to the isles of fancy, the earthly paradises of the 
old-world wanderers — to Atalantis and Eldorado — and, as 
he muses, he wonders whether Africa holds any city so fair 
as those of the older world : 

* Wide Afric, doth thy Sun 
Lighten, thy hills enfold a city as fair 
As those which starr'd the night o' the elder World ? 
Or is the rumour of thy Timbuctoo 
A dream as frail as those of ancient time ? ' 

Then suddenly a Seraph is with him, speaking : 

' Thy sense is clogg'd with dull mortality, 
Thy spirit fetter'd with the bond of clay : 
Open thine eyes and see.' 

The poet looks ; and all his senses are quickened : 

'I saw,' 

he says, 

1 The smallest grain that dappled the dark Earth, 
The indistinctest atom in deep air, 



26 ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON 

The Moon's white cities, and the opal width 
Of her small glowing lakes, her silver heights 
Unvisited with dew of vagrant cloud, 
And the unsounded, undescended depth 
Of her black hollows. 5 

Then suddenly there bursts on the vision a glory of towers : 

1 A wilderness of spires, and crystal pile 
Of rampart upon rampart, dome on dome, 
Illimitable range of battlement 
On battlement, and the imperial height 
Of canopy o'ercanopied. 

The glory of the place 
Stood out a pillar'd front of burnish'd gold, 
Interminably high, if gold it were 
Or metal more ethereal, and beneath 
Two doors of blending brilliance, where no gaze 
Might rest, stood open, and the eye could scan 
Through length of porch and valve and boundless hall 
Part of a throne of fiery flame, wherefrom 
The snowy skirting of a garment hung, 
And glimpse of multitudes on multitudes 
That minister'd around it.' 

And the Seraph raises the poet as he falls, and tells him his 
name. He is the mighty spirit who teaches man to attain 
' By shadowing forth the Unattainable ' — 

playing about his heart, visiting his eye with visions, haunt- 
his ear 

'With harmonies of wind and wave and wood.' 

' 1 am the Spirit, 
The permeating life which courseth through 
All th' intricate and labyrinthine veins 
Of the great vine of Fable.' 

And with a sigh he reflects that soon he must render up 
this glorious home to ' Keen Discovery? till the brilliant 
towers shrink into huts, low-built, mud-walled, the loathly 
opposite of this City of Dream. 

So the Seraph leaves him, and the poet is alone on Calpe. 

' And the Moon 
Had fallen from the night, and all was dark ! ' 

The poem, suffering as it does from a certain unreality, 
a sense of forced art and laboured decoration, is neverthe- 
less very remarkable as the work of a man in his twentieth 



CAMBRIDGE 27 

year. It has a richness of imagination and a brilliance of 

light and colour that are almost dazzling; it shows, too, 

an ease and skill in handling the metre, and a sense of 

melody which are quite Tennysonian. Many of the lines 

have all the sound of his maturer verse : 

' Blench'd with faery light, 
Uncertain whether faery light or cloud.' 

' Look into my face 
With his unutterable shining orbs.' 

1 The clear Galaxy 
Shorn of its hoary lustre, wonderful.' 

' In accents of majestic melody.' 

These lines might have fallen directly from the ' Idylls.' 
A tendency to weak endings — such as : 

* Listeneth the lordly music flowing from 
Th' illimitable years.' 

' Bathes the cold head with tears, and gazeth on 
Those eyes.' 

shows the immature hand ; but there is very little in the 
poem that falls below the level of the whole. It is a well- 
sustained, fantastic piece of work, imaginative, aesthetic, 
polished — a curiously-interesting indication of the character 
which his later work was to assume. Here and there is a 
touch of Wordsworth and a reminiscence of ' The Excur- 
sion,' but its chief interest lies in its faint prophecy of form 
and treatment to be. 

In the scarcity of contemporary criticism it is interesting 
to read a letter from Christopher Wordsw r orth to his brother 
Charles, in which he speaks of the Prize Poem with very 
genuine enthusiasm. ' What do you think/ he wrote from 
Cuddesdon on September 4, 1829, 'of Tennyson's Prize 
Poem ? If such an exercise had been sent up at Oxford, 
the author would have had a better chance of being rusti- 
cated — with the view of his passing a few months in a 
Lunatic Asylum — than of obtaining the prize. It is certainly 
a wonderful production ; and if it had come out under 
Lord Byron's name, it would have been thought as fine 
as anything he ever wrote.' This is high praise — too high, 
indeed. And it is a little hard on the Oxford judges, who 
from time to time have not lacked the wit to appreciate 



28 ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON 

the early promise of Bishop Heber, Matthew Arnold, 
Mr. John Ruskin, John Addington Symonds, and Sir 
Edwin Arnold. 

Before we leave i Timbuctoo ' altogether, another inci- 
dent in the history of the poem gives it interest, and 
demands a brief record. Thackeray, who was another 
contemporary of Tennyson's at Trinity, though apparently 
in a different set, published, in a weekly periodical called 
The Snob, a travesty of the prize poem of the year; and 
the burlesque attracted some attention from members of 
the college. The novelist's diary relates that at a wine- 
party the parody * received much laud,' and that 'he could 
not help finding out that he was very fond of this same 
praise.' It does not seem to be a very happy parody, 
however ; if the praise was based on its imitative felicity, 
it was easily won. 

1 In Africa — a quarter of the world — 
Men's skins are black ; their hair is crisp'd and curl'd ; 
And somewhere there, unknown to public view, 
A mighty city lies, called Timbuctoo.' 

This cannot be intended as a travesty : the story bears 
error upon the face of it. Thackeray's poem is not only 
not in the least degree like Tennyson's in matter or style, 
but it is written in the heroic couplet. A parodist would 
first of all have seized on the blank verse, the unpre- 
cedented novelty in form. It is hardly to be doubted 
that Thackeray's was merely a 'rejected address,' a comic 
effort on the theme suggested for the prize. It was most 
probably written before any one knew who the prizeman 
was, or had seen Tennyson's poem. 

Meanwhile the friendship between Hallam and Tennyson 
was growing in fervour, and during the next year they w r ere 
together at Somersby Rectory. They had determined to 
publish a volume of poems together, and Charles was 
occupied in the same field too. He had secured an 
academic success as well, a Bell scholarship, which was 
awarded him chiefly in consideration of the exquisite 
English into which he had translated the Greek and Latin 
unseen papers. The world was opening before the brothers, 
full of hopes and aspirations. But Frederick seems to 



CAMBRIDGE 29 

have stood for the moment out of the tide, reserved, and a 
little sad. Milnes describes him as a prey to ' melancholy 
idleness/ withdrawing himself from society, unwilling to 
compete for the Greek Ode, which his friends thought 
a certainty for him, altogether given over to something 
very like a morbid moroseness. Frederick's moodiness is 
the only shadow in a picture of otherwise unbroken gaiety. 
Stories of the time represent him as sinister in aspect, 
terrific in manner, even to the alarm and discomfiture of 
elderly dons. 

Among the many interests of the Cambridge circle 
amateur theatricals had their place. On March 19, 1830, 
a performance of ' Much Ado about Nothing ' found three 
of Tennyson's friends in leading parts. Richard Monckton 
Milnes played Beatrice, while John Mitchell Kemble and 
Arthur Hallam were respectively the Dogberry and Verges. 
Milnes was also stage-manager. 

All this time Alfred Tennyson was continually at work 
upon poetry of one kind or another. In the evenings a few 
chosen friends would congregate in his rooms, and the young 
poet in his deep, half-articulate, melodious monotone would 
read them his latest verses. Henry Alford's Journal men- 
tions such an occasion, when Hallam, Merivale, and others 
listened to the ' Hesperides.' 

This poem, which was one of the chief objects of disap- 
proval to ' The Quarterly Reviewer/ was printed in the Poems 
in 1832, but subsequently suppressed. It is full of a weird 
fancy, mystical and undefined, with a tendency to allusive- 
ness which deprives it of real power. But it is melodious, 
and very highly finished. 

* Father Hesper, Father Hesper, watch, watch, night and day, 
Lest the old wound of the world be healed 
The glory unsealed, 
The golden apple stol'n away, 
And the ancient secret revealed. 
Look from west to east along : 

Father, old Himala weakens, Caucasus is bold and strong. 
Wandering waters unto wandering waters call ; 
Let them clash together, foam and fall. 
Out of watchings, out of wiles 
Comes the bliss of secret smiles. 
All things are not told to all. 



30 ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON 

Half-round the mantling night is drawn, 

Purple fringed with even and dawn. 

Hesper hateth Phospher, evening hateth dawn.' 

It has the sound of some chorus from a Greek drama : and 
one can fancy how Tennyson's deep voice trolled it out and 
made music of its unaccustomed metre. 

Archbishop Trench, towards the end of his life, gave a 
vivid description of these readings to Mr. Edmund Gosse, 
to whose kindness the writer owes the possibility of its 
recapitulation here. It was an understood thing, the Arch- 
bishop said, that the listeners should remain listeners only : 
while they were free to hear, they were forbidden to criticise. 
They sat round the table, while the poet, with his face lit 
by the lamp, crooned out his mellifluous music. If they 
were pleased, it was understood that they might eventually 
say so ; but silence must be the nearest approach to disap- 
proval. Even as early as this, it seems, Tennyson was the 
victim of an exquisite sensitiveness, which was quite in- 
tolerant of direct criticism. It seemed to be like physical 
pain to him that his friends should find fault w r ith his work. 
But an antidote to the susceptibility was found in the severe 
scrutiny to which he subjected every word he wrote. He 
w r as his own critic, and knew no mercy for himself. 

In this w r ay he continued writing and correcting, but the 
book of poems by Tennyson and Hallam was never pub- 
lished. Hallam's father, the historian, did not approve of 
the idea \ so instead of the joint volume, the author of 
' Timbuctoo ' appeared in print alone in a thin volume of 
154 pages — called Poems, chiefly Lyrical — published in 1830 
by Effingham Wilson. Perhaps the most interesting copy 
of this book still extant is that in the Dyce collection at 
South Kensington, which contains an inscription : * Robert 
Southey, 27 July, 1830, Keswick, from James Spedding.' 
It w r ould be tedious to recapitulate an entire table of the 
contents, but mention may perhaps be made of a few poems 
which subsequent issue has made familiar to us. Among 
the Juvenilia still preserved in the Laureate's collected 
works, 'Claribel,' 'Nothing will die,' ' All things will die,' 
' The Kraken,' ' Lilian,' * Isabel,' ' Mariana,' ' Madeline,' 
'The Owl,' 'Recollections of the Arabian Nights,' 'The 



CAMBRIDGE 31 

Ode to Memory,' C A Character,' 'The Poet,' 'The Poet's 
Mind,' 'The Deserted House,' 'The Dying Swan,' 'Love 
and Death,' 'A Dirge,' 'Oriana,' 'Circumstance,' 'The 
Merman ' and ' The Mermaid,' ' The Sea Fairies,' ' Adeline,' 
and the Sonnet to J. M. Kemble, all appeared in this 
volume. The song, ' The Winds, as at their hour of birth,' 
the lines beginning ' Clear-headed friend, whose joyful 
scorn,' and 'The Sleeping Beauty,' afterwards expanded, 
are also among the contents of Poems, chiefly Lyrical. 

The book met with some attention. It w r as criticised in 
The Westminster Review of January 1831, in a notice 
which, while it doubted the instant appreciation of the 
poems, predicted a brilliant future for the writer. The re- 
viewer remarked : 

' That these poems will have a very rapid and extensive popularity 
we do not anticipate. Their very originality will prevent their being 
generally appreciated for a time. But that time will come, we hope, 
to a not far-distant end. They demonstrate the possession of powers, 
to the future direction of which we look with some anxiety. A 
genuine poet has deep responsibilities to his country and the world, 
to the present and future generations, to earth and heaven. He, of all 
men, should have distinct and worthy objects before him, and con- 
secrate himself to their promotion. It is thus that he best consults the 
glory of his art, and his own lasting fame. Mr. Tennyson has a 
dangerous quality in that facility of impersonation on which we have 
remarked, and by which he enters so thoroughly into the most strange 
and wayward idiosyncrasies of other men. It must not degrade him 
into a poetical harlequin. He has higher work to do than that of 
disporting himself amongst "mystics" and "flowing philosophers." 
He knows that " the Poet's mind is holy ground ; " he knows that the 
poet's portion is to be 

"Dower'd with the hate of hate, the scorn of scorn, 
The love of love ;" 

he has shown, in the lines from which we quote, his own just con- 
ception of the grandeur of a poet's destiny ; and we look to him for its 
fulfilment. It is not for such men to sink into mere verse-makers for 
the amusement of themselves or others. They can influence the 
associations of unnumbered hearts ; they can disseminate principles ; 
they can give those principles power over men's imaginations ; they 
can excite in a good cause the sustained enthusiasm that is sure to 
conquer ; they can blast the laurels of the tyrants, and hallow the 
memories of the martyrs of patriotism ; they can act with a force, the 
extent of which it is difficult to estimate, upon national feelings and 
character, and consequently upon national happiness. If our estimate 
of Mr. Tennyson be correct, he too is a poet, and many years hence 



32 ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON 

may he read his juvenile description of that character with the proud 
consciousness that it has become the description and history of his 
own work.' 

This notice gave great satisfaction to Tennyson's friends. 
'Have you seen the review of A. T.'s poems in the West- 
minster}' wrote Monteith to Milnes. ' It is really enthu- 
siastic. If we can get him well reviewed in the Edinburgh 
it will do.' 

Samuel Taylor Coleridge also admired, but with reserva- 
tion. He w r as overpowered by the brilliance and wealth of 
the metre : he had never heard such music before. He 
could not measure it. 

'I have not,' he wrote, * read through all Mr. Tennyson's poems 
which have been sent me, but I think there are some things of a good 
deal of beauty in that I have seen. The misfortune is, that he has 
begun to write verses without very well understanding what metre is. 
Even if you write in a known and approved metre, the odds are, if you 
are not a metrist yourself, that you will not write harmonious verses ; 
but to deal in new metres without considering what metre means and 
requires, is preposterous. What I would, with many wishes of success, 
prescribe to Tennyson — indeed without it he can never be a poet in 
art — is to write for the next two or three years in none but one or two 
well-known and strictly- defined metres; such as the heroic couplet, 
the octave stanza, or the octosyllabic measures of the Allegro and 
Pemeroso. He would probably thus get imbued with a sensation, if 
not a sense of metre, without knowing it, just as Eton boys get to write 
such good Latin verses by conning Ovid and Tibullus. As it is, I can 
scarcely scan his verses.' 

This was the difficulty w T ith so many of Tennyson's 
critics. His work was so bold, his melody so fluent, that 
they could not understand him. But his friends knew him 
better. In August of the same year Arthur Hallam con- 
tributed a paper to The Englishman's Magazine, ' On some 
Characteristics of Modern Poetry, and on the Lyrical 
Poems of Alfred Tennyson,' full of the praises of his 
friend. 'The features of original genius,' he said, 'are 
clearly and strongly marked. The author imitates no- 
body.' 

Five excellencies in especial attracted Hallam towards 
his friend's work. ' First, his luxuriance of imagination, 
and at the same time, his control over it. Secondly, his 
power of embodying himself in ideal characters, or rather 



CAMBRIDGE 33 

moods of character, with such extreme accuracy of adjust- 
ment that the circumstances of the narrative seem to have 
a natural correspondence with the predominant feeling, 
and, as it were, to be evolved from it by assimilative force. 
Thirdly, his vivid, picturesque delineation of objects, and 
the peculiar skill with which he holds all of them fused, to 
borrow a metaphor from science, in a medium of strong 
emotion. Fourthly, the variety of his lyrical measures, and 
exquisite modulation of harmonious words and cadences to 
the swell and fall of the feelings expressed. Fifthly, the 
elevated habit of his thought, implied in these compositions, 
and imparting a mellow soberness of tone, more impressive, 
to our minds, than if the author had drawn up a set of 
opinions in verse, and sought to instruct the understanding 
rather than to communicate the love of beauty to the heart.' 
Friends are naturally carried away into superlatives ; but 
the poems had undoubted power. They had more; they 
argued originality. They were full of that appreciation of 
nature which had been born again, after an age of con- 
ventional poetry, in the work of Wordsworth, while they 
combined with his sympathy with the countryside a richness 
and variety of melody, which may have been due to the 
influence of Shelley and Keats, for whom Alfred Tennyson 
had at the time a special affection. At the same time there 
was an originality of treatment, an individuality of feeling, 
about them which justified Hallam's verdict — ' the author 
imitates nobody/ The portraits of feminine character, 
delicate miniatures, as it were, painted on ivory, have a 
fresh charm and melody which has rendered them a per- 
manent addition to our literature. 'Airy, fairy Lilian,' 
1 Ever-varying Madeline/ ' Revered Isabel, the crown and 
head, the stately flower of female fortitude,' 'Shadowy, 
dreaming Adeline;' — they are a perfect picture-gallery in 
themselves. One might well add Mariana, too, drawing 
her casement-curtain to glance athwart the gloomy flats, 
with the eternal sigh : ' He cometh not/ This was all 
something new to poetry, something human and direct, 
with a touch of its own that claimed attention. 'The 
Ballad of Oriana ' must also be ranked as one of the wildest 
and most pathetic of his poems. He has never surpassed 

C 



34 ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON 

the tender yearning of the metre. ' When Norland winds 
pipe down the sea ' is a splendid line, full of the sweep and 
melancholy of the storm. 

Several of the pieces have not been reprinted. Among 
those suppressed, at least for a time, are two rather involved 
efforts at mental analysis, dealing with the struggle of doubt 
and faith — ' Supposed confessions of a second-rate sensitive 
mind not in unity with itself,' and the 'How and the Why.' 
The latter poem has some strange lines which suggest the 
germ of 'The Higher Pantheism.' The spirit and its treat- 
ment are very like : 

* The bulrush nods unto its brother : 
What is it they say ? What do they^ere ? ~t 
Why two and two make four ? Why round is not square ? 
Why the rock stands still, and the light clouds fly? 
W 7 hy the heavy oak groans, and the white willows sigh? 
Why deep is not high, and high is not deep? 
Whether we wake, or whether we sleep? 
Whether we sleep, or whether we die ? 
How you are you ? Why I am I ? 
Who will riddle me the kow and the why ? ' 

The other poem is stronger, and has the advantage of a 
metre better adapted to the thought. Tennyson prevented 
its republication by The Christian Signal ' ; but during the 
last ten years his view has been changed, and the poem has 
been finally included in his collected works : 

1 Ay me ! I fear 
All may not doubt, but everywhere 
Some must clasp Idols. Yet, my God, 
Whom call I Idol ? Let Thy dove 
Shadow me over, and my sins 
Be unremembered, and Thy love 
Enlighten me. Oh, teach me yet 
Somewhat before the heavy clod 
Weighs on me, and the busy fret 
Of that sharp-headed worm begins 
In the gross blackness underneath. 
O weary life ! O weary death ! 
O spirit and heart made desolate ! 
O damned vacillating state ! ' 

'Dualisms,' also suppressed, is playfully alluded to in a 
correspondence between Wordsworth and Claughton, Bishop 
of St. Albans. The latter wrote, in January 1834, 'While 



CAMBRIDGE 35 

you have been reading Rose (Hugh Rose's University 
Sermons) to Cantelupe, I have been doing the same here. 
These coincidences are what Tennyson calls " dualisms." 5 

The poem, however, is rather melodious than meta- 
physical : 

' Where in a creeping cove the wave unshocked 
Lays itself calm and wide. 
Over a stream two birds of glancing feather 
Do woo each other, carolling together ; 
Both alike they glide together, 

Side by side 
Both alike they sing together, 
Arching blue-glossed necks beneath the purple weather.' 

Another little piece, since omitted from his works, sounds 
like an echo from the Elizabethan poets. It is called ' The 
Burial of Love/ and is rather artificial : 

1 Love is dead : 
His last arrow is sped ; 
He hath not another dart ; 
Go, carry him to his dark death-bed ; 
Bury him in the cold, cold heart — 
Love is dead.' 

More in the Tennysonian spirit, with the life and fire of 
'Fatima,' but with a startlingly clear echo of Shelley, is 
' Hero and Leander,' a very passionate outburst of love in 
this strain : 

1 Oh, go not yet, my love, 

The night is dark and vast ; 
The white moon is hid in her heaven above, 

And the waves climb high and fast. 
Oh ! kiss me, kiss me, once again, 
Lest thy kiss should be the last. 
Oh kiss me ere we part ; 
Grow closer to my heart. 
My heart is warmer surely than the bosom of the main. 

O joy ! O bliss of blisses ! 

My heart of hearts art thou. 
Come bathe me with thy kisses, 

My eyelids and my brow. 
Hark how the wild rain hisses, 
And the loud sea roars below.' 

The other suppressed poems were less worthy — one 'A 
National Song,' inspired by Campbell and Allan Cunning- 
ham, was perhaps scarcely worth printing, though, in an 



36 ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON 

altered form, it reappeared sixty-two years later in 'The 
Foresters,' where (such is the forgetfulness of critics) it was 
reviewed as an entirely new lyric. But the blemishes on 
the book were very few, and the beauties were undeniable. 

Small wonder that Tennyson's friends were full of en- 
thusiasm. 'Truly one of the great of the earth,' said 
Blakesley of the poet. ' In Alfred's mind the materials of 
the greatest work are heaped in an abundance which is 
almost confusion,' said John Kemble. And yet again, 
Arthur Hallam, standing in the Somersby garden, said to 
Tennyson, ' Fifty years hence, people will make pilgrimages 
to this place.' The promise on which the friends based 
their praise has not been belied by the performance. 

At the time, however, the young poet was not to be left 
to the admiration of his friends, without some critic to 
question his promise. In May 1832, Professor Wilson, 
under the pseudonym of ' Christopher North,' wrote for 
Blackwood 'i" Magazine a violent attack upon Tennyson and 
his little band of followers. The Englishman's Magazine 
had come to an untimely end, and this afforded the critic 
an opportunity for his cynicism. It was the essay on ' The 
Genius of Alfred Tennyson,' he declared, which sent the 
periodical to its grave : for the essay was distinguished by a 
' supernatural pomposity ' which ' incapacitated the whole 
work for living one day longer in this unceremonious world.' 
People, he added, were not yet prepared to set Alfred 
Tennyson ' among the stars ' ; but ' if he had not some 
genius, he would scarcely have survived the critique.' So 
' Christopher North ' : and to Tennyson's sensitive tempera- 
ment the attack must have been a cruel one. 

Indeed, in his next volume of poems, published at the 
end of the same year, he included a little polemic in verse, 
retorting upon ' musty, rusty, fusty ' Christopher, in language 
that shows that the sting of the critic struck deep. The 
critique, says Tennyson, mingled blame and praise : but 
praise was intolerable from North : 

; When I learnt from whom it came, 
I forgave you all the blame, 

Musty Christopher ; 
I could not forgive the praise, 

Fusty Christopher.' 



CAMBRIDGE 37 

Second thoughts, and a nature that hates ' the spites and 
the follies ' have erased these lines from later collections of 
his poetry. 

But before reviews had appeared and the fame of the 
book had been noised abroad, much had been happening 
in Tennyson's life to draw him even nearer to Arthur 
Hallam. During the summer of 1830, the two friends 
made an exciting journey to the Pyrenees. The tyranny of 
Ferdinand of Spain had been answered by the voice of 
conspiracy, and the War of Spanish Independence was at 
its height. Trench and Sterling, Tennyson and Hallam, 
were all much interested by the struggle, and the two last 
named actually made an expedition to the relief of the 
rebels, carrying with them some money and letters written 
in invisible ink. ' And a wild bustling time we had of it,' 
said Hallam. ' I played my part as conspirator in a small 
way, and made friends with two or three gallant men who 
have since been trying their luck with Valdes.' 

This must have been an experience calculated to knit the 
friends very firmly to one another, and within a few months 
of their return Alfred Tennyson had to face a trouble which 
naturally threw him even more than before upon the 
sympathy of his friends. In the March of the following 
year ' one went who never hath returned ' ; and the death 
of his father fell upon Tennyson as no common loss. Him- 
self deeply interested in literature and art, the father must 
have sympathised keenly with his son's early successes, and 
in missing his genial advice and encouragement, the poet 
missed much that would have lent a brighter colour to his 
after progress. 

' He will not smile — not speak to me 

Once more. Two years his chair is seen 
Empty before us. That was he 
Without whose life I had not been.' 

After his father's death, Alfred Tennyson left Cambridge, 
without taking his degree. The Somersby home was not, 
however, immediately broken up : Mrs. Tennyson remained 
in the Rectory until 1837, the duty being taken by Mr. E. A. 
Robinson, a curate. Hallam's sympathy with Tennyson's 



38 ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON 

loss must have been the more heartfelt, since before this 
time he had begun to feel an affection for the poet's sister 
Emily. Indeed, during 1831 the affection developed into 
something stronger, and ripened into a private engage- 
ment — kept secret at the wish of Hallam's father, until 
Arthur should come of age. During that time it was 
agreed that the young people should not meet, and Hallam 
went back to Cambridge. It was at this time that he won 
a prize for declamation. His subject was c The Conduct 
of the Independent Party during the Civil War'; and, in 
consequence of this success, he had to deliver a speech in 
the chapel upon 'The Influence of Italian upon English 
Literature.' 

Meanwhile Charles Tennyson had published a volume 
of sonnets, which appeared about the same time as Poems, 
chiefly Lyrical. These poems Trench compared to Keats, 
while Kemble declared them ' superb ' ; and the two 
brothers were reviewed together by Leigh Hunt in The 
Tatler, his notice of them extending from Thursday, 
February 23rd, to Thursday, March 30th. The considera- 
tion ended in the critic's decision that Alfred was the more 
promising poet of the two. Alfred contributed also some 
three or four poems during the year to periodicals : ' No 
More,' 'Anacreontics,' and 'A Fragment' appearing in 
The Gem, and a sonnet beginning ' Check every outflash, 
every ruder sally ' in The Englishman's Magazine for August. 
These poems were not reprinted, though they were quite 
worthy of preservation. 

It is natural that, in the course of time, much of his 
earlier work should seem to its author to demand rejection : 
but the final choice is best determined by the question of 
the place filled by the poems in the gradual progress of 
development. Does this or that poem represent an influ- 
ence, typify a period ? Then it should be retained. Each 
of the short pieces under discussion has interest as an 
example of a phase of the poet's thought. Each is an 
example of a different course in his progress. They might, 
therefore, with justice find their place in the collected 
edition of his work. 

The Gem for 1831, in which Tennyson's three poems 



CAMBRIDGE 39 

appeared, was further enriched by contributions from W. 
M. Praed, Bernard Barton, the Hon. Mrs. Norton, Mary 
Howitt, Sir Aubrey de Vere, and Miss Mitford. The first 
of Tennyson's pieces, ' No More,' has much in common 
with his later songs. It is picturesque, dreamy, melan- 
choly : 

{ Oh sad No More ! Oh sweet Nc More ! 
Oh strange No More ! ' 

he sighs, and the sight and scent of the wild-weed flowers 
remind him, as the harvest-fields and the breaking wave 
among the rocks were to remind him anew, of hopes lost 
and loves remembered. The drowsy melancholy of nature 
enthrals him, and draws him into sorrow : 

1 Surely all pleasant things had gone before, 
Low buried fathom-deep beneath with thee, No More ! ' 

In the c Anacreontics,' which are richer in colour than in 
thought, there is an echo of the full, deep-mouthed music 
which rolled through 'Claribel.' And there is the same 
thinness of motive. A dozen lines are used to describe a 
garland of 

* roses musky breathed 
And drooping daffodilly, 
And silver-leaved lily, 
And ivy darkly wreathed,' 

with which the poet crowns his Lenora, winning her love 
by his gift. The workmanship is too elaborate for the 
picture : the impression produced is but slight. 

The ' Fragment ' of thirty-one lines is a veritable frag- 
ment, a description of eastern scenery, vivid, but not very 
suggestive. An extract will recall the tone and touch of 
' Timbuctoo,' of which it was probably a rejected passage : 

■ Where, 
Mysterious Egypt, are thine obelisks, 
Graven with gorgeous emblems undiscern'd ? 
Thy placid Sphinxes brooding o'er the Nile ? 
Thy shadowy Idols in the solitudes, 
Awful Memnonian countenances calm, 
Looking athwart the burning flats, far off 
Seen by the high-neck'd camel on the verge, 
Journeying southward.' 



40 ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON 

There remains the sonnet printed in The Englishman's 
Magazine for August 1831, the number that included 
Hallam's paper on Tennyson's verses. It lacks the com- 
pleteness and the centred thought of a perfect sonnet, but 
it is richly decorated with brilliant words. The second and 
third lines, too, have interest from their subsequent con- 
nection with i The Lotos Eaters ' : 

' Check every outflash, every ruder sally, 

Of thought and speech : speak low, and give up wholly 
The spirit to mild-minded Melancholy : 
This is the place.' 

And the rest of the sonnet describes a valley, w r ith its 
' blue-green river ' winding through it, w T ith the cry of the 
nightingale in the larches, and the sleeping pine-wood 
above, — a valley of enchantment in the poet's eyes, since 
here he first told his love. This is not the matter for a 
sonnet, nor has Tennyson often succeeded in throwing into 
the limit of fourteen lines the high seriousness and com- 
pleteness of thought through which alone a sonnet can attain 
perfection. It is the form in which he is least a master. 

To turn for a moment from the work to the man : a 
picture of the poet as he was at this time, sketched by the 
pen best able to draw him, appears in a letter of Arthur 
Hallam's, dated March 20, 1832. ' His nervous tempera- 
ment,' he says, ' and habits of solitude, give an appearance 
of affectation to his manner, which is no true interpretation 
of the man, and wears off on further knowledge. ... I 
think you would hardly fail to see much for love, as well 
as for admiration.' It was always so with Alfred Tennyson. 
The keenest shyness is ever apt to issue in a sort of 
mannerism, which to the casual eye appears affectation. 
A fuller friendship breaks down the reserve and pierces to 
the heart of the man itself. 

In the same year Hallam took his degree and left 
Cambridge for London, where his name was entered at the 
Inner Temple. But before he went up to town the 
summer was spent at Somersby. His year of probation 
was over. He was now of age ; and the engagement to 
Tennyson's sister was generally acknowledged. ' I am now 



CAMBRIDGE 41 

at Somersby,' he wrote to R. C. Trench, ' not only as the 
friend of Alfred Tennyson, but as the lover of his sister. 
An attachment on my part of near two years' standing, and 
an engagement of one year's are, I hope, only the com- 
mencement of an union which circumstances may not 
impair, and the grave itself not conclude.' The letter, 
which is one of those confidences almost too sacred for 
publication, speaks with the most delicate feeling and the 
soundest sense of his father's earlier prohibition, and of the 
comfort and new life given him in the realisation of his love. 
The sonnet published in the ' Remains,' which opens : 
1 Lady, I bid thee to a sunny dome,' was written to her : 
and the brother's memory of this time finds voice in one of 
the most beautiful passages in ' In Memoriam.' There we 
see Arthur Hallam, now mixing in all the c simple sports,' 
now reading ' the Tuscan poets on the lawn ' : 

1 Or in the all-golden afternoon 

A guest, or happy sister, sung, 
Or here she brought the harp and flung 
A ballad to the brightening moon.' 

It was so that Arthur Hallam himself remembered her. 

* Sometimes I dream thee leaning o'er 

The harp I used to love so well ; 
Again I tremble and adore 

The soul of its delicious swell ; 
Again the very air is dim 

With eddies of harmonious might, 
And all my brain and senses swim 

In a keen madness of delight.' 

Or again, it might be a picnic in the woods that formed 
the day's entertainment, brightened by discussions on books 
and politics, or a debate on the pleasures and drawbacks of 
town and country life. And Arthur was all for the country, 
full of the beauty of 

1 The woodbine veil, 
The milk that bubbled in the pail, 
And buzzings of the honey'd hours.' 

And when the evening fell, the little circle lingered on the 
lawn, and the sound of the brook came to them across the 



42 ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON 

evening mist, and the bats wheeled round under the trees, 
while the party sang old songs till it grew late, 

1 And in the house light after light 
Went out.' 

Tennyson, describing this evening scene of years after- 
wards, when Hallam was lost to him, tells us how vividly 
it brought back to him the glad year when they were 
together ; so that, when the rest were gone to bed, the 
poet was left in a trance, which dreamed on the likeness 
and yet unlikeness of the two nights. The scene remained 
the same, but the light was gone out from it : nothing but 
the memory remained. 

So these days at Somersby become a time to linger 
fondly over, — a fresh, green glade, as it were, in the wilder- 
ness of life ; a rest and consolation by the way. 



45 



CHAPTER III 

LITERARY TROUBLES AND ARTHUR 
HALLAM'S DEATH 

In October 1832 Arthur Hallam went up to London, 
working with a Mr. Walters, a conveyancer in Lincoln's 
Inn Fields, and living at 67 Wimpole Street, the dark 
house in the 'long, unlovely street.' His little joke on the 
address — 'You will always find me at. sixes and sevens' — is 
well known. During the summer he had again applied 
himself to literary work, with a rejoinder to Rossetti's 
' Disquisizioni Sullo Spirito Antipapale,' in which he com- 
bated the theory that Dante and Petrarch had merely in- 
vented their characters for the sake of veiling an attack 
upon the current religious tenets of the day. From the 
date of his going to London, however, the duller work of 
life claimed him, the 'brawling courts and dusty purlieus 
of the law.' While he was at work in his office, Alfred 
Tennyson was busy preparing a new T volume for the press, 
and contributed two sonnets to The Yorkshire Literary 
Annual, and Friendship 's Offering respectively. Towards 
the end of the year the new volume appeared, a volume a 
little larger than Poems, chiefly Lyrical, since it amounted 
to some 163 pages. It was published by Edward Moxon. 
A copy of this book, preserved in the Dyce collection at 
South Kensington, contains on the fly-leaf, written in pencil, 
an irregular sonnet, which reads like a very boyish deprecia- 
tion of Cambridge and its tuition. It is best forgotten. 

Many of the pieces are among his best-known works ; but 
of the thirty poems which composed the volume, a dozen 
have since been cancelled. ' The Lady of Shalott,' 
' Mariana in the South,' ' Eleanore/ ' The Miller's Daughter,' 
interesting from its association with Granchester Mill, 
* GEnone,' inspired by the visit of Hallam and the poet to 



42 ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON 

r the Pyrenees, 'The Sisters/ 'The Palace of Art/ 'The 
May Queen/ l New Year's Eve/ ' The Lotos Eaters/ and 
'A Dream of Fair Women/ are the best reputed poems in 
the volume, while ' Fatima/ ' Margaret/ the sonnet to 
Poland, 'The Death of the Old Year/ and the lines to 
'J. S.' have also been preserved in later editions. The 
book was in every way an advance on the 1830 volume. 
The lyrical melody and flow, which permeated ' Oriana ' and 
the portraits, had grown even richer in ' The Lady of 
Shalott ' and ' The Lotos Eaters ' ; and, while the music 
and inspiration of the verse had deepened, the poet's mind 
had, in its growth, drawn to itself stronger and more per- 
manent subjects, and treated them with a firmer and more 
dramatic touch. It is interesting to note how early the 
mind, searching for scenes and characters akin to its tem- 
perament, lighted upon the Arthurian legend and took it to 
itself. ' The Lady of Shalott ' is one of the earliest signs of 
an inclination which had not yet crystallised into perform- 
ance. It is, moreover, an excellent example of the perfec- 
tion with which Tennyson catches every detail in the phase 
of nature which he is picturing. The early part of the 
poem is a sequence of pictures, reflected in the mirror with 
a vivid exactitude. The long fields of barley, the island 
among its lily-beds, the stretch of the river with the wind 
sweeping across it, where 

' Willows whiten, aspens quiver, 
Little breezes dusk and shiver ' — 

all these are views, lovingly touched in by the sympathetic 
hand of an artist. And when movement enters the poem, 
a sharp stroke breaks the reflection, and hurries us out 
into life : 

' Out flew the web and floated wide ; 
The mirror crack'd from side to side.' 

The second half of the poem is alive with the flow of the 
river ; it sweeps along to the sound of the ripple : 

* Lying, robed in snowy white 
That loosely flew to left and right — 
The leaves upon her falling light — 
Thro' the noises of the night 

She floated down to Camelot : 



LITERARY TROUBLES 45 

And, as the boat-head wound along 
The willowy hills and fields among, 
They heard her singing her last song, 
The Lady ofShalott.' 

This is a double view of nature ; its picturesque and vital 
elements are contrasted with a swift discrimination. In 
1 The Lotos Eaters ' we get a still more vivid appreciation 
of the influence of nature upon the senses. This poem 
breathes the very essence of the complete self-abandonment 
of a sensuous temperament to the dreamy charm of summer 
scenery. All memory of the outer world is lost in the 
ecstasy of the moment. The life of work seems most 
weary, and one of the band of dreamers finds voice for the 
thought that the others have scarcely the energy to utter : 
' We will return no more ! . . . Why should life all labour 
be?' To the spirit stagnant in the charm of the Lotos- 
land there seems no true happiness, save the idle careless- 
ness of the Gods, at ease beside their nectar, 

* Resting weary limbs at last on beds of asphodel. ' 

It is the very apotheosis of sensuous enjoyment. 

This was something new to literature. The formal, re- 
strained poetry of Wordsworth had wedded itself to the 
melody and colour of Keats and Shelley and the vigour 
of Byron, and the result was Tennyson. Keats had not 
more colour, nor Shelley more music. Wordsworth's skill 
in reading nature's secrets combined in Tennyson with a 
delicacy and refinement of observation which turned every 
scene he touched into a little masterpiece. Words cannot 
evoke a deeper colour than the tints of such scenery as the 
following : 

* It was the deep midnoon : one silvery cloud 
Had lost his way between the piney sides 

Of this long glen. Then to the bower they came. 

Naked they came to that smooth-swarded bower, 

And at their feet the crocus brake like fire, 

Violet, amaracus, and asphodel, 

Lotos and lilies : and a wind arose, 

And overheard the wandering ivy and vine, 

This way and that, in many a wild festoon 

Ran riot, garlanding the gnarled boughs 

With branch and berry and flower thro' and thro'. 



46 ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON 

And again, the drowsy, motionless luxury of a summer 
afternoon never found a voice to equal this : 

* How sweet it were, hearing the downward stream, 
With half-shut eyes ever to seem 
Falling asleep in a half-dream ! 
To dream and dream, like yonder amber light, 
Which will not leave the myrrh-bush on the height ; 
To hear each other's whisper'd speech ; 
Eating the Lotos day by day, 
To watch the crisping ripples on the beach, 
And tender curving lines of creamy spray ; 
To lend our hearts and spirits wholly 
To the influence of mild-eyed melancholy ; 
To muse and brood and live again in memory, 
With those old faces of our infancy 
Heap'd over with a mound of grass, 
Two handfuls of white dust, shut in an urn of brass !' 

This was no boy-poet, playing with his girl-companions 
down the garden paths, laughing with Lilian, changing with 
Madeline's caprices, or wondering over the unfathomed 
depths in Adeline's eyes. This was a man who looked at 
nature with a man's clear gaze, and felt it with a man's 
strong passion. His poetry was the voice of a sensitive, 
nervous mind, quivering in sympathy with nature. 

The strength of the passion in ' Fatima ' proved that 
Tennyson had passed out of his boyhood ; there are few 
lines more eloquent of love, even in Swinburne : 

1 O Love, O fire ! once he drew 
With one long kiss my whole soul thro' 
My lips, as sunlight drinketh dew. 

I will grow round him in his place, 
Grow, live, die looking on his face, 
Die, dying clasp'd in his embrace.' 

But it was not as an artist and a lover alone that 
Tennyson claimed attention ; he showed himself a thinker 
as well. 'The Palace of Art,' opening with a character- 
istically luxurious description of the ' lordly pleasure-house ' 
which the poet built his soul, proceeded through a keen 
process of mental analysis to sift the discomfort with which 
the glorious home infected his spirit. This was the cry of 
a mind that had suffered, and through suffering had over- 



LITERARY TROUBLES 47 

come. It was an allegory, too, of the poet's own course of 
thought. His lordly palace of art had no charm for his 
soul : 

1 So when four years were wholly finished, 

She threw her royal robes away. 
" Make me a cottage in the vale," she said, 
" Where I may mourn and pray." ' 

It is not till after this communing with nature in her secrecy 
that the soul will be fit to live among the shining treasures 
of art. 

These two elements, the artistic and the intellectual, 
unite in his sketches of life and character, which showed 
already a certain dramatic power, and a skill in fixing on 
the distinctive features of the subject. Here is a finished 
little sketch of genre : 

' I see the wealthy miller yet, 

His double chin, his portly size, 
And who that knew him could forget 

The busy wrinkles round his eyes ? 
The slow, wise smile, that round about 

His dusty forehead drily curl'd, 
Seem'd half-within and half-without, 

And full of dealings with the world ? ' 

There is a fineness of touch in the portrait which was 
denied to the early impressionist pictures of girl-life; a 
familiarity with the medium gives the poet a confidence 
in his own power. He ceases to generalise mistily; and 
strikes the living picture down upon the page. The rather 
artificial setting in 'A Dream of Fair Women' is almost 
obliterated by the brilliance of the gems it encloses. We 
get a true touch of dramatic power in such a speech as 
this: 

' W T e drank the Libyan Sun to sleep, and lit 

Lamps which out-burn'd Canopus. O my life 
In Egypt ! O the dalliance and the wit, 
The flattery and the strife, 

And the wild kiss, when fresh from war's alarms, 

My Hercules, my Roman Antony, 
My mailed Bacchus leapt into my arms, 

Contented there to die ! ' 



48 ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON 

Or again : 

' " Moreover it is written that my race 

Hew'd Amnion, hip and thigh, from Aroer 
On Arnon unto Minneth." Here her face 
Glow'd, as I look'd at her.' 

The poet loses himself in his character ; and nowhere does 
he lose himself more completely than in ' The May Queen/ 
a poem which is simple without triviality, while the chastened 
pathos of the sentiment is as full of dramatic energy as it is 
free from rhetorical posture. 

These were the principal riches of the volume ; there are 
other poems interesting from their subsequent suppression, 
and others, again, from their association. 

Among the latter are the lines to Christopher North, 
already quoted, and the little piece, ' Darling Room, 7 
satirically alluded to in Bulwer Lytton's subsequent attack 
on Tennyson. This last poem, rather an inconsequential 
effort, describes the study in which the poet preferred to 
work. There are a tendency to gush, and a weakness in 
touch, which gave an opportunity to Tennyson's reviewer. 

i O darling room, my heart's delight, 
Dear room, the apple of my sight ; 
With thy two couches, soft and white, 
There is no room so exquisite : 
No little room so warm and bright, 
Wherein to read, wherein to write.' 

The critic treated the sentiment captiously ; but there was 
room for a reprimand. This is how The Quarterly Review 
proceeded : ' We entreat our readers to note how, even in 
this little trifle, the singular taste and genius of Mr. 
Tennyson break forth. In such a dear little room a 
narrow-minded scribbler would have been content with one 
sofa, and that one he would probably have covered with 
black mohair or red cloth, or a good striped chintz ; how 
infinitely more characteristic is white dimity ! — 'tis, as it 
were, a type of the purity of the poet's mind.' 

This is a badinage which overleaps itself and falls on 
the other side. But the poem was not worthy of the poet : 
it is the finical work of a dilettante, suggesting a mind 



LITERARY TROUBLES 



49 



busied with little things — a mind, in short, inferior to 
Tennyson's. It is well omitted. 

There are two poems, however, the omission of which 
may be regretted : two additions to the portrait-gallery of 
maidenhood — * Rosalind' and 'Kate.' There was room 
for each of these types, and each is treated with Tennyson's 
full felicity. It needs but a brief extract to prove their 
excellence. ' Rosalind,' suppressed for many years, but 
finally revived, is delightful. ' Kate ' has never been 
deemed worthy of restoration. 

' My Rosalind, my Rosalind, 
My frolic falcon, with bright eyes, 
Whose keen delight, from any height of rapid flight, 
Stoops at all game that wing the skies. 
My Rosalind, my Rosalind, 
My bright-eyed, wild-eyed falcon, whither, 
Careless both of wind and weather, 
Whither fly ye, what game spy ye, 
Up or down the streaming wind? ' 

This is a very spirited portrait of a spirited girl, untamed, 
untamable. And then the contrast, — the Kate of his 
consolation and his strength,— -passionate and true : 

1 I know her by her angry air, 
Her bright-black eyes, her bright-black hair, 

Her rapid laughters wild and shrill, 
As laughters of the woodpecker 

From the bosom of a hill. 
'Tis Kate— she sayeth what she will : 
For Kate hath an unbridled tongue, 

Clear as the twanging of a harp. 

Her heart is like a throbbing star. 
Kate hath a spirit ever strung 
Like a new bow, and bright, and sharp 

As edges of the scymetar. 
Whence shall she take a fitting mate ? 

For Kate no common love will feel ; 
My woman-soldier, gallant Kate, 

As pure and true as blades of steel.' 

These were worthy of a continued and permanent place in 

his picture-gallery ; but the poet was his own keenest critic. 

Such were the riches of the little ship that came ashore 

to an inhospitable country. There was every evidence of 

D 



5 o ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON 

wealth and power. Ther e were variety of subject, variety 
of treatment, variety of melody; there were a sense of 
beauty, a depth of passion, and a keen analytical insight 
into man and nature. There was, moreover, a new note in 
literature. The natural poetry of the preceding period had 
been, in fact, artificial ; its simplicity had been studied, its 
ease was affectation. Tennyson was to free literature from 
these shackles, to soar above convention into the clear, 
unclouded atmosphere of nature. He was a new influence, 
a new genius, a new power. The Quarterly Review thought 
otherwise. In a strain of bombastic praise it hailed another 
star in ' that milky-way of which the lamented Keats was 
the harbinger : ' ' the lamented Keats/ in whose case the 
great literary journal had already sufficiently stultified itself. 
The reviewer found Tennyson's sympathy with nature 
ludicrous ; and reviled ' CEnone ' altogether, since he found 
the same line repeated no fewer than sixteen times. The 
tone of the criticism may be best judged by a short extract, 
which is characteristic of the reviewer's taste. He quotes 
and comments in this manner : 

' " Then let wise Nature work her will, 
And on my clay her darnels grow, 
Come only when the days are still, • 
And at my headstone whisper low, 
And tell me " 

Now, what would the ordinary bard wish to be told under 
such circumstances? Why, perhaps, how his sweetheart 
was, or his child, or his family, or how the Reform Bill 
worked, or whether the last edition of his poems had sold ? 
— papae I our genuine poet's first wish is : 

' ; And tell me — if the woodbines blowy 

It was not a very critical estimate for a great review. 
Nor was Blackwood's Magazine much calmer. It found 
Tennyson hampered by a ' puerile partiality for particular 
forms of expression,' and ' self-willed and perverse in his 
infantile vanity.' These were bitter attacks ; and they 
wounded Tennyson to the quick. ' The Lover's Tale ' was 
in the press at the time, and the poet was so nervously 



LITERARY TROUBLES 51 

sensitive to its shortcomings that he immediately withdrew 
it. But a few copies, as we have mentioned before, sur- 
vived in proof among the collections of his personal friends. 
At that time the first two parts alone were written, and it 
was not till 1869 that ' The Golden Supper' w T as printed, 
without the preludes, in the volume which included 'The 
Holy Grail.' Ten years later the work was issued in its 
entirety. Without the conclusion, the story lacks motive 
and progress ; and the poem is best considered in its perfect 
form, which has the additional advantage of being the shape 
which the author ultimately approved. 

A bare outline of the story requires few words. Julian, 
the narrator, has been brought up with his cousin and 
foster-sister Camilla, for whom he conceives a passionate 
love.- His worship of her is silent, however : he never tells 
his passion. 

' I did not speak : I could not speak my love. 
Love lieth deep : Love dwells not in lip-depths. 5 

But he feeds his life on hopes, which are cruelly shattered 
one summer morning when, unconscious of his thought of 
her, Camilla tells him of her love for his friend Lionel. 
Julian's heart is broken, and he wastes his life in moody 
solitude. He is haunted by visions of her death ; his fancy 
sees her funeral, and again, her wedding. Then, as he 
approaches the real event of the story, he breaks off over- 
whelmed by emotion, and in 'The Golden Supper' the 
narrative is taken up by a friend. Camilla married Lionel, 
and died within the year. They buried her in an open 
coffin in the family vault, whither, like Romeo, Julian stole 
to look upon her, and kiss her in death. And, as he holds 
her to him, he feels her heart beat beneath his hand : she 
is alive. In secret haste he carries her to his house, where 
she returns to life, and immediately afterwards her child is 
born. Then Julian lives 'his golden hour of triumph. ' 
He bids Lionel to a feast ; and sets his best before him. 
At the end, citing an Eastern custom which shows the 
honoured guest the richest treasures of his entertainer, 
he brings Camilla into the hall. She is reunited to 
Lionel, and Julian, conscious of having crowned his love 



52 ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON 

with magnanimity, rushes from the spectacle of their 
happiness. 

4 It is over : let us go — 

There were our horses ready at the doors — 

We bade them no farewell, but mounting these 

He past for ever from his native land ; 

And I ' (says the narrator) ' with him.' 

The poem, in its complete shape, is an admirable indication 
of the development of Tennyson's style. The first two 
parts — those, that is, which were finished in 1833 — are 
markedly different from the conclusion. The whole of the 
early part of the poem is adorned and elaborated even 
beyond the author's wont. It is a study of the moods and 
impulses of the lover, but the dramatic progress of the work 
is continually impeded by masses of imagery and long 
passages of description. The mind wantons in the luxury 
of the scene, calls up every detail of the picture, and dwells 
lovingly on the aspect of the hillside and the lake beside 
which Camilla and Julian wandered : 

' We trod the shadow of the downward hill ; 
We past from light to dark. On the other side 
Is scoop'd a cavern and a mountain hall, 
Which none have fathom'd. . . . 

. . . The cavern mouth, 
Half overtraded with a wanton weed, 
Gives birth to a brawling brook, that passing lightly 
Adown a natural stair of tangled roots, 
Is presently received in a sweet grave 
Of eglantines, a place of burial 
Far lovelier than its cradle ; for unseen, 
But taken with the sweetness of the place, 
It makes a constant bubbling melody 
That drowns the nearer echoes. Lower down 
Spreads out a little lake, that, flooding, leaves 
Low banks of yellow sand ; and from the woods 
That belt it rise three dark, tall cypresses, — 
Three cypresses, symbols of mortal woe, 
That men plant over graves. 5 

The voluptuous affection for nature, the warm, overloaded 
phraseology, and the long-drawn eloquence of melancholy 
passion are indisputable signs of an early study of Shelley. 
The influence was transitory, and its trace is almost obli- 



LITERARY TROUBLES 53 

terated. It remains clear, however, in the first part of 
' The Lover's Tale.' When the poem appeared in its 
entirety in 1879, Mr. Edmund Gosse, reviewing it in The 
Academy, set an instant finger on the pulse of the work. 
' Especially interesting, 7 he said, ' is the proof that this poem 
gives of the mastery held over the style of Tennyson at that 
moment by Shelley, a mastery that would have left little or 
no mark in literature but for this poem, in the first part of 
which the recent reading of " Epipsychidion " has frequently 
seduced the young poet aside from his own more charac- 
teristic language. This influence was soon to fade before 
the much more powerful one of Keats, the one poet ante- 
cedent to Tennyson, to whom the latter has at any time 
stood directly in the relation of a disciple. But there is 
yet but very little of Keats in the music or imagery of " The 
Lover's Tale.'" 

With 'The Golden Supper' there comes a change. The 
treatment is more dramatic, the grasp on the subject more 
confident. Event follows event with spirited rapidity : the 
narrative is keen, concise, eager. The pictures are not less 
vivid, but they are sketched with bolder, clearer touches. 

' He rose and went, and entering the dim vault, 
And making there a sudden light, beheld 
All round about him that which all will be. 
The light was but a flash, and went again. 
Then at the far end of the vault he saw 
His lady with the moonlight on her face ; 
Her breast as in a shadow-prison, bars 
Of black and bands of silver, which the moon 
Struck from an open grating overhead 
High in the wall, and all the rest of her 
Drown'd in the gloom and horror of the vault.' 

Every word gives colour, and the whole picture is wrought 
in with masterly rapidity. 

It was well, perhaps, that ' The Lover's Tale ' was de 
tained for its vigorous conclusion; but its suppression at 
the time must have been a pain to Tennyson and a dis- 
appointment to his friends. The article in The Quarterly 
Review was cruel enough to discourage a young writer; 
but its inclination to carp, and its occasional hypercriticism, 



54 ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON 

might have deprived it, one feels, of some of the weight it 
carried. The rebuke was not without its use, however. 
Trench's fear lest the young poet should be spoiled by 
admiration was rendered groundless. He felt the rebuff 
very keenly ; and, when next he appeared with a volume of 
poems, it was to take the world by storm. The ten years' 
silence, caused to no small degree by the virulence of The 
Quarterly Review, was a period of seed-time and harvest, 
which was to bring his power into something like full 
maturity. 

In March 1833 Tennyson was in town with his sister, — 
not the one to whom Hal] am was engaged, — studying the 
Elgin Marbles. During his visit to London he must have 
been with Arthur Hallam, who was still at work, but ailing. 
He had never been strong; and during his first year at 
Cambridge the symptoms of a delicate constitution had 
become more threatening. A rapid determination of blood 
to the brain, his father tells us, continually deprived him 
of physical power. During the spring of 1833 ne was 
attacked by influenza, and his recovery was so slow that his 
parents decided to take him abroad. In August they left 
for Germany. Here, travelling on a wet day between 
Vienna and Pesth, he developed an intermittent fever, of 
which he died upon the 15th of September 1833. His 
remains were brought back to England, and buried at 
Clevedon on the 3rd of January in the following year, in 
the church which belonged to his mother's father, Sir 
Abraham Elton. 

The tablet that preserves the memory, which is more 
lastingly written in 'In Memoriam/ bears the following 
inscription : — 



ARTHUR HALLAiWS DEATH 55 

TO THE MEMORY OF 

ARTHUR HENRY HALLAM, 

OF TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE, B.A. 

ELDEST SON OF HENRY HALLAM, ESQ., 

AND OF JULIA MARIA, HIS WIFE, 

DAUGHTER OF SIR ABRAHAM ELTON, BART., 

OF CLEVEDON COURT, 

WHO WAS SNATCHED AWAY BY SUDDEN DEATH 

AT VIENNA, ON SEPT. 15, 1833, 

IN THE 23RD YEAR OF HIS AGE. 

AND NOW IN THIS OBSCURE AND SOLITARY CHURCH, 

REPOSE THE MORTAL REMAINS OF 

ONE TOO EARLY LOST FOR PUBLIC FAME, 

BUT ALREADY CONSPICUOUS AMONG HIS 

CONTEMPORARIES. 

FOR THE BRIGHTNESS OF HIS GENIUS, 

THE DEPTH OF HIS UNDERSTANDING, 

THE NOBLENESS OF HIS DISPOSITION, 

THE FERVOUR OF HIS PIETY, 

AND THE PURITY OF HIS LIFE. 

Vale, dulcissime, 

vale dilectissime, desideratissime, 

requiescas in pace. 

Pater ac Mater hie posthac requiesca7nus tecum 

usque ad ttcbam. 

His death fell as a terrible blow upon Alfred Tennyson 
and his sister. Francis Garden, writing to Trench, describes 
the Tennyson family as ' plunged in the deepest affliction.' 
The mutual love of the two friends was a singularly beauti- 
ful one, and the separation was a loss such as can come 
but once or twice in a lifetime. Other loves and other 
interests were to succeed : but this first passionate love 
never lost its hold upon the poet's heart, and at the 
moment Alfred Tennyson was too much overwhelmed to 
work. Even poetry failed to charm him from his sorrow. 
It was not till many years afterwards that his grief was to 



56 



ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON 



find voice in one of the most refined and most keenly 
analytic poems in the language, a poem which may well be 
set side by side with Milton's ' Lycidas,' and that ' Adonais ' 
which Arthur Hallam himself first introduced to English 




CLEVEDON CHURCH. 



readers. The grief was then softened by resignation, and 
hallowed by the purity of faith. 
f Forgive,' he could say — 

1 Forgive these wild and wandering cries, 
Confusions of a wasted youth ; 
Forgive them where they fail in truth, 
And in thy wisdom make me wise.' 



CHAPTER IV 

EARLY YEARS IN LONDON 

After Hallam's death Tennyson came to live in London, 
and to apply himself to literary work. The years that follow 
partake of that silent development which, while its worth 
is proved in after-years, is wont to be monotonously un- 
attractive at the time. The severe criticism vented upon 
the Poems of 1832 threw the writer back upon himself even 
more intimately than before \ and the keenness in judging 
his own work, which had marked bis Cambridge days, 
rendered him peculiarly diffident of further publication. 
For nearly ten years no book from his pen was given to the 
general public. In 1834 the Cambridge Union issued a 
small volume of Transactions, which seems, as it were, the 
last cord to bind the old associations together. In this 
pamphlet was included the * Adonais ' of Shelley, which 
Arthur Hallam had brought to England from Italy, and was 
now practically introduced for the first time into English 
literature. The volume, besides this greater gem, con- 
tained some verses by Charles Tennyson on the expedition 
of Napoleon Buonaparte to Russia, and the two poems 
by Hallam and Tennyson upon 'Timbuctoo.' 

This little book brought the Cambridge associations to 
a close ; and for the next few years a desultory poem or two, 
published in annual collections, were all the evidence of 
Tennyson's progress to maturity. At the same time, he 
was always at work. 'Alfred Tennyson,' wrote Trench to 
Donne, as early as in January 1834, ' has so far recovered 
from the catastrophe in which his sister was involved as to 
have written some new poems, and, they say, fine ones.' 
It was a time of laborious production and pre-eminently 
quiet growth : with a strong effort of will the poet denied 
himself the satisfaction of immediate performance. It was 
a time, too, of some privation. The literary beginner's 
life in London is apt to involve a struggle, and the struggle 



58 ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON 

becomes the sterner when the equipment is the unsought 
commodity of poetry. So it happens that we hear little of 
Tennyson in the next few years ; he was keeping to himself 
— as ever, reserved, and, as ever, particular in the choice 
of his friends. Those friends, however, whose adoption he 
had tried, were always eager in their admiration. To the 
small circle already mentioned another of the old under- 
graduate companions at Trinity comes to be added during 
the next year — Edward FitzGerald, who stayed with him 
in Cumberland with the Speddings, in the end of April and 
beginning of May 1835. It was a delightful visit. In the 
evening FitzGerald would play chess with Spedding's 
mother, while Tennyson and Spedding retired together to 
read over ' Morte d'Arthur,' ' The Lord of Burleigh,' and 
the rest of the poet's new work. Old Mr. Spedding used 
to object to his son spending so much time in this friendly 
criticism. ' Well, Mr. FitzGerald,' he would say, * and what 
is it? Mr. Tennyson reads and Jim criticises? Is that 
it ? ' FitzGerald never forgot this time, when his favourite 
1842 volumes were growing into life and colour, like 'the 
daffodils breaking round the hall door.' He seems to have 
been struck, as all who knew Tennyson were struck, by the 
unusual and sustained promise of his friend. ' The more 
I have seen of him,' he says, ' the more cause I have to 
think him great.' While amused with his 'little humours 
and grumpinesses/ he could not resist, he adds, an oc- 
casional feeling of depression ' from the overshadowing of a 
so much more lofty intellect ' than his own. He found in 
Tennyson 'a universality of the mind,' which benefited him 
by the consciousness of his own ' dwarfishness.' The 
affection for this man was even surpassed by his admiration 
for the poet. He placed him, thus early, second only to 
Wordsworth, because he felt that Tennyson did ' no little 
by raising and filling the brain with noble images and 
thoughts, which purify and cleanse us from mean and 
vicious objects, and so prepare and fit us for the reception 
of the higher philosophy.' FitzGerald's early estimate of 
Tennyson sums itself up in his own words : ' When he has 
felt life, you will see him acquire all that at present you 
miss : he will not die fruitless of instruction as he is.' It is 



EARL Y YEARS IN LONDON 59 

pleasant to find that the friend, who was afterwards one of 
the most candid, and often one of the least sympathetic of 
his critics, started, at any rate, full of enthusiasm and of 
hope for the future. Among new friends, too, whom this 
London sojourn brought to Tennyson was Thomas Carlyle, 
who about this time settled down in Cheyne Row to his 
task of The French Revolution, and was one of the first to 
recognise the genius of the future Laureate. 

Meanwhile Tennyson's friendship for that earliest of his 
friends, Richard Monckton Milnes, was none the less vivid 
for occasional relapses into silence. ' I shall not easily 
forget you,' wrote Alfred, during the last month of the year 
of Hallam's death, ' for you have that about you which one 
remembers with pleasure.' And during the winter of 1836 
Milnes and Tennyson were thrown together in a correspond- 
ence which has in it much that is interesting, and even 
more that is characteristic. Milnes had been deputed to 
solicit contributions for an annual, called The Tribute, 
edited by Lord Northampton, and published for some 
charitable purpose. Milnes at once bethought him of his 
old Cambridge friends, asking with others Trench, Spedding, 
Aubrey de Yere, and Whewell. Most of them were ready 
enough to assist : but a difficulty arose over Tennyson's 
contribution. ■ Three years back,' he answered, ' provoked 
by the incivility of editors, I swore an oath that I would 
never again have to do with their vapid books.' 'To write 
for people with prefixes to their names,' he continued, 'is 
to milk he-goats ; there is neither honour nor profit.' 
Milnes presumably knew his friend, and might with reason 
have been expected to understand his waywardness. Yet,, 
at that moment, he was vexed — not only with the refusal, 
but with the manner of its expression ; and Tennyson was 
treated to one of those momentary flashes of anger which 
were so characteristic of bis correspondent. Tennyson's 
answer showed how little he had expected to be taken 
seriously. ' Why, what in the name of all the powers, my 
dear Richard, makes you run me down in this fashion ? . . . 
What has so jaundiced your good-natured eyes as to make 
them mistake harmless banter for insolent irony ? ' So, in 
a mood of the merriest badinage, he proceeds to a promise 



6o ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON 



to help the annual, if he can, and to get contributions from 
his brothers as well. 

Eventually all three gave their aid : and Alfred's was the 
aid of his happiest inspiration. The verses which he sent 
to The Tribute were those which afterwards formed the 
groundwork of ' Maud ' — the noble lines beginning — 

' Oh that 'twere possible 

After long grief and pain 
To find the arms of my true love 
Round me once again ! ' 

It was worth the little difference of opinion to have elicited 
such a contribution, — 'a poem,' as Mr. Swinburne has 
said, ' of deepest charm and fullest delight of pathos and 
melody.' 

The same winter saw the appearance of another short 
poem by Tennyson, ' St. Agnes,' which was printed in The 
Keepsake for 1837. The title was altered, in the volume 
published in 1855, to 'St. Agnes' Eve,' the name by which 
it has been subsequently known. It is a calm, religious 
poem, in a manner which has since found more than one 
imitator : and, no doubt, it was the kind of poem to appeal 
to a wide, if slightly unlettered public. At any rate it had 
some vogue at its appearance : but Tennyson's friends, 
hearing its fame from afar, appear to have been a little 
disappointed when they came to read it. * An iced saint,' 
said one of them, ' is certainly better than an ice cream, 
but not much better than a frosted tree. The original 
Agnes is worth twenty of her.' It is a crude criticism, but 
there is truth at the heart of it. 'St. Agnes,' displaying 
the momentary influence of Keble, was not representative 
of Tennyson's best. 

While Alfred's life was harassed by the unsettled fluctua- 
tions of a literary struggle, his brother Charles was moving 
through stiller waters. In 1835 he was ordained, and 
appointed to the curacy of Tealby, and shortly after 
became Vicar of Grasby, a village in the midst of the 
Lincolnshire wolds. In 1836 he was married, at Homcastle, 
to Miss Louisa Sellwood, and on the death of his great- 
uncle, Mr. Turner, in 1838, he moved to Caistor, some 
three miles from Grasby, where his brother Alfred was an 



EARLY YEARS IN LONDON 61 

occasional visitor. At this time he took the name of 
Turner ; but still retained the living of Grasby, where he 
built a new vicarage and schools. 

In 1837 Mrs. Tennyson had to leave Somersby, and 
moved to High Beach, Essex. Subsequently, three years 
later, the family settled at Tunbridge Wells, where they 
only remained one year, moving to Boxley, near Maidstone, 
in 1 84 1. 

It must have been about the time of leaving Somersby 
that Alfred Tennyson wrote the ' Progress of Spring,' a 
poem laid aside and forgotten by the writer, till it turned 
up again in 1888, to be printed in the 'Demeter' volume 
in the following year. It was the inspiration of a spring 
holiday, when the sloe was whitening and the kingcup 
ablaze, — a holiday, too, of stir and adventure, 'in rickfire 
days.' And Tennyson himself was out with the other 
hands to the rescue, passing the buckets to quench the 
fire of thirty ricks, which had been set alight by roughs, 
rioting in a demand for 'the People's Charter.' It was at 
this time that he first knew Miss Mary Boyle (to whom he 
afterwards dedicated 'The Progress of Spring ') — 

1 a lover's fairy dream, 
His girl of girls 

with whom he was to preserve a friendship of more than 
fifty years. It is supposed, too, that it was to her sister 
that he addressed the later verses : 

1 Rose, on this terrace fifty years ago.' 

Little was published at this time ; but Tennyson was 
brooding over and conceiving his best. ' In Memoriam ' 
was opening into gradual growth : and other poems were 
being written and rewritten, which were shortly to lift his 
name to the foremost position among the poets of the day. 
The continual self-criticism, however, did not prevent him 
from showing his most congenial side to the few friends 
he encouraged. FitzGerald was often with him — a very 
appreciative companion. ' We have had Alfred Tennyson 
here,' he wrote in April 1838 to Bernard Barton, the Quaker 
poet who was afterwards to be his father-in-law ; ' very droll 



62 ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON 

and very wayward : and much sitting up of nights till tw T o 
and three in the morning, with pipes in our mouths : at 
which good hour we would get Alfred to give us some of 
his magic music, which he does between growling and 
smoking ; and so to bed.' Tennyson's friends were always 
charmed to have him read his work to them, and yet he 
was never a good reader. His ear, nervously anxious to 
emphasise the rhythm, was careless of articulation, and the 
deep monotone, in which he almost chanted the lines, left 
the actual words strangely indistinct. It required a full 
knowledge of the poem to appreciate the recitation. ' I 
rather need to know by heart what he is reading,' wrote 
the late Sir Henry Taylor many years later; 'for otherwise 
I find sense to be lost in sound from time to time. . . . 
The rhythm so sounded loses something of its musical, and 
more of its intellectual, significance. . . . Nevertheless his 
reading is very fine of its kind.' So, too, Bayard Taylor : 
' His reading is a strange monotonous chant, with un- 
expected falling inflexions, which I cannot describe, but 
can imitate exactly. It is very impressive.' 

Besides a welcome to single friends, Tennyson had 
an occasional enthusiasm for literary gatherings. 'The 
Anonymous Club,' which was afterwards re-named 'The 
Sterling,' numbered him among its members. It used to 
meet once a month to discuss philosophical and literary 
subjects, and the associates must have been men after the 
poet's heart of hearts. Carlyle was there, and Cunningham, 
Macready and John Stuart Mill, Forster and Sterling, 
Thackeray and Walter Savage Landor, — a distinguished 
coterie, and a friendly body of congenial spirits. Here is a 
dinner invitation from Landor to Tennyson, which,, to judge 
from its geniality, promises a convivial evening to follow : — 

' I entreat you, Alfred Tennyson, 
Come and share my haunch of venison. 
I have, too, a bin of claret, 
Good, but better if you share it. 
Tho' 'tis only a small bin, 
There 's a stock of it within, 
And as sure as I ? m a rhymer, 
Haifa butt of Rudesheimer. 
Come ; among the sons of men is one 
Welcomer than Alfred Tennyson ? ' 



EARL Y YEARS IN LONDON 



63 



1 ' -*"■ -- SSSK 



tmm\ 



And so Tennyson continued during the next year or two, 
now toiling over his manuscript in his London lodging, now 
running down into the country with a friend, finding fresh 
inspiration in 
every nook; 
now talking 
over literary 
prospects with 
his associates, 
or, again, din- 
ing at the 
'Cock' in 
Fleet Street, 
and sitting 
late into the 
evening over 
the pint of 
port and the 
cigars. Such 
a dinner is 
recalled by 
S p e d d i n g, 
when the two 
dined to- 
gether, and 
two chops and 
a pickle, two 
cheeses and a 
pint of stout, 
preceded the 
port and the 
tobacco. The 
old ' Cock ' is 
swept away 
now, with a 
bank on its 

site; and the enthusiast w T ho is anxious to get a notion 
of its appearance must content himself with the pictures 
of its staircase and dining-room, which hang in a room 
in a new r tavern under the old name, almost opposite 




FIREPLACE IN THE COCK TAVERN'. 



64 ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON 

the Fleet Street end of Chancery Lane. The 'old grill- 
room,' as it is called, is refitted with the boxes ' larded with 
the steam of thirty thousand dinners/ with their brass rods 
and rusty curtains. The fine old oak fireplace has been 
moved there bodily : the floor is still sanded, and the 
crockery is of the willow pattern. And ever bustling and 
hustling his two boy assistants, Paul, himself a waiter at the 
former house, strives with a genial contempt for conven- 
tionality to keep the old spirit astir in the new surroundings. 
' Chump chop — opposig/if the fireplace. Two kippers in 
order. Hurry up that rabbit for the chair-table, ple-a-se. 
Good evening, gentlemen, and thank you.' And Paul 
rattles you out as hurriedly as he welcomed you in. The 
' Lyrical Monologue,' surmounted by a portrait of the 
' Cock,' carved by Grinling Gibbons, has been reprinted 
by the proprietor, and Paul is proud to give his customer 
a copy. 'Tennyson wrote all that,' he says confidingly, 
'wrote it in the old "Cock," after dinner. Tennyson, you 
know : Lord Tennyson now, he is ; ' and Paul's eyes glisten 
before the splendour of the title. 

When he was not dining at the ' Cock,' Tennyson would 
have the meal in his own lodgings in Camden Town, where 
Trench often joined him. The port was never omitted, 
though it had to be fetched from a neighbouring public- 
house. Sometimes the poet's friends would expostulate, 
and wonder how he kept well on such a dangerous vintage. 
But Tennyson was easily contented. 'As long as it is 
sweet, and black, and strong,' he said, 'it's good enough 
for me.' And so the evenings were spent ; and almost 
every day some new poem slipped from his pen. His work 
was continuous ; friends were always urging him to publish, 
but the poet was adamant. Trench regretted the silence. 
' I think,' he said, ' with the exception of myself and him, 
everybody sent to The Tribute the poorest, or nearly the 
poorest things that they had by them. His poem was 
magnificent.' Milnes regretted it. 'Tennyson composes 
every day,' he wrote to Aubrey de Vere, 'but nothing will 
persuade him to print, or even write it down.' But the 
value of the silence was proved when it was broken. Tenny- 
son was determined that his next volume should be as 



EARLY YEARS IN LONDON 65 

good as he could make it ; and the event justified the 
labour. 

In the early summer of 1840 he was with FitzGerald 
at Leamington ; and the two made pleasant excursions 
together, visiting, among many places, Kenilworth and 
Stratford-on-Avon. The little knot of Cambridge friends 
still kept together in London. Spedding was living in 
Lincoln's Inn Fields, working all day at the Colonial Office, 
and frequently at the theatres at night. ' Pollock and 
Pride,' says FitzGerald, ' travel to and fro between their 
chambers in the Temple and Westminster, occasionally 
varying their travels, when the Chancellor chooses, to the 
Courts in Lincoln's Inn.' Tennyson was ' busy preparing 
for the press, full of doubts and troubles.' 

Early in 1842 the little fears and hesitations were at an 
end : two volumes of Poems by Alfred Tennyson were 
issued by Moxon of Dover Street, and a new era in the 
poet's reputation had begun. The first volume of the new 
edition consisted chiefly of poems already published in the 
1830 and 1832 collections, some untouched, some slightly 
altered, others entirely rewritten ; while some half-dozen 
new poems, written for the most part in 1833, were added. 
The second volume was composed of entirely new poems, 
with two exceptions — 'The Sleeping Beauty,' which appeared 
in 1830, and 'St. Agnes,' Tennyson's contribution to The 
Keepsake for 1837. Among these new poems were 'The 
Epic,' 'The Gardener's Daughter,' 'Dora,' 'Audley Court, 5 
' Walking to the Mail,' 'St. Simeon Stylites,' 'The Talking 
Oak,' 'Love and Duty,' 'Locksley Hall,' 'Ulysses,' 'Godiva,' 
'The Two Voices,' 'Sir Galahad,' 'Edward Gray,' 'Will 
Waterproof's Lyrical Monologue,' 'Lady Clare,' 'The Lord 
of Burleigh,' ' Sir Launcelot and Queen Guinevere/ ' A 
Farewell,' 'The Beggar Maid,' 'The Vision of Sin,' 'Break, 
Break, Break,' and 'The Poet's Song.' 

'The Morte d'Arthur' was read to Landor as early as 
1837, and 'The Two Voices' was dated 1833 in the first 
edition. Another bibliographical point worthy of notice 
is the fact that 'Dora' was suggested by a story of Miss 
Mitford's, called Dora Cresswell, and ' Lady Clare,' by 
Miss Ferriefs novel, The Inheritance, which was first 

E 



66 ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON 

published in 1824. Among poems subsequently omitted 
was 'The Skipping Rope,' which ■ FitzGerald deprecated 
from the first. 

1 Sure never yet was Antelope 

Could skip so lightly by. 
Stand off, or else my skipping rope 
Will hit you in the eye. ' 

It is a curious evidence of an excursion into a field in 
which the poet never found his way. It reminds us of the 
rough humour of ' Amphion,' — an attempt to write with the 
pen of the popular singer of society. But Tennyson was no 
drawing-room bard. The swing of the melody is ruined by 
the triviality of the wit : and FitzGerald's criticism is juster 
than usual. 'Alfred/ he said, 'whatever he may think, 
cannot trifle. . . . His smile is rather a grim one. . . . 
I grieve for the insertion of these little things, on which 
reviewers and dull readers will fix, so that the right ap- 
preciation of the book will be retarded a dozen years.' 

The right appreciation of the book, however, was scarcely 
retarded for six months. The Quarterly Review for 
September 1842 sang a generous palinode, in recantation 
of its earlier attack, finding the volume ' a real addition to 
our literature.' ' Among the streams and rocks,' said the 
reviewer, ' he begins to discourse of virtue ; and when he 
has risen on the ladder of his vision to the stars, we shall 
hear him singing from the solar way that it is by temperance, 
soberness, and chastity of soul he has so climbed, and that 
the praise of this heroic discipline is his last message to 
mankind.' 

Milnes had something to say, too, and an appreciative 
critique from his pen was printed in The Westminster 
Revieiv for October 1842. 

Other praise was not wanting. Edgar Allan Poe, in 
The Democratic Revietv, declared himself unable to decide 
whether Tennyson was not ' the greatest of poets ; ' and 
Charles Dickens, reading his volume at Broadstairs on 
August 7, 1842, wrote: 'I have been reading Tennyson all 
this morning by the seashore. Who else could conjure up 
such a close to the extraordinary, and (as Landor would say) 



EARL Y YEARS IN LONDON 67 

" most woonderful" series of pictures in ; 'The Dream of 
Fair Women " ? — 

* " Squadrons and squares of men in brazen plates, 
Scaffolds, still sheets of water, divers woes, 
Ranges of glimmering vaults with iron grates, 
And hush'd seraglios." ' 

Dickens's admiration for Tennyson never waned. Two 
years later, he wrote : ' I have been reading Tennyson again 
and again. What a great creature he is ! ' And again, 
when the ' Idylls ' appeared : ' Lord ! w T hat a blessed thing 
it is to read a man who really can write : I thought nothing 
could be finer than the first poem till I came to the third ; 
but when I had read the last, it seemed to me to be 
absolutely unapproachable.' 

Poe's admiration, also, rose rather than decreased as the 
years brought new r poems from Tennyson's pen. Some five 
years after his first utterance, he gave another criticism in 
an essay on 'The Poetic Principle,' which abandoned all 
uncertainty of sound for a thorough strain of praise. ' In 
perfect sincerity,' he wrote, ' I regard Alfred Tennyson as 
the noblest poet that ever lived. I call him, and think him, 
the noblest of poets, not because the impressions he pro- 
duces are at all times the most profound, not because the 
poetical excitement which he induces is at all times the 
most intense, but because it is at all times the most ethereal, 
— in other words, the most elevating and most pure. No 
poet is so little of the earth earthy.' 

This enthusiasm was not momentary: Poe was continually 
expressing himself to the same effect. The favourable 
opinion of the poems entertained by Poe was shared, too, 
by other critics across the water; and the admiration of 
Emerson and his followers induced a Boston publisher to 
reprint the two volumes in an exact facsimile of the English 
edition. It is pleasing to read amid the turmoil of American 
piracy that the reprint w T as issued for the author's benefit. 
Emerson's estimate was direct and just. 'Tennyson is 
endowed/ he said, ' precisely in the points where Words- 
worth wanted. There is no finer ear, nor more command 
of ihe keys of language.' 



68 ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON 

The rise of Alfred Tennyson must be dated, then, from 
the appearance of these poems, which derive a singular 
interest from their instantaneous success. M. Taine de- 
clares that the earliest attraction which readers found in 
Tennyson's work was centred in his portraiture of women — 
in 'Adeline,' ' Eleanore,' ' Lilian,' and the like, — ' Keepsake 
characters,' he calls them, 'from the band of a lover and an 
artist. 5 . It suited M. Taine to trace the vogue of the poet 
from these melodious, delicately-tinted lyrics, because his 
object was to show Tennyson as an artist rather than a 
thinker, to find him the dreamer of a summer afternoon, a 
drowsy contrast to Alfred de Musset, who, 'from the heights 
of his doubt and despair, saw the infinite, felt the inner 
tempest of deep sensations, quaint dreams, and intense 
voluptuousness, whose desire enabled him to live, and 
whose lack forced him to die.' It suited M. Taine to take 
this view, and the view had a side-light of truth to illumine 
it. But the critic who saw in Tennyson's early poems 
merely the languor and restful ease of ' an idle singer of an 
empty day ' was blind to the clearer, the more individual 
side of his message to mankind. The lyrical poems, the 
absence of whose ' champagne flavour ' FitzGerald mourned 
in Tennyson's later work, were rich in melody, full of the 
joy of life, and coloured with the rosy tint of youth ; but the 
poet had a heart for higher things than the sweetest 'ballad 
made to his mistress' eyebrow.' These formed the riches 
of his earliest volume, and the riches were great for im- 
maturity. But the interval had brought new gifts, and 
ripened the old ones into something stronger. It had 
stirred in the poet that dramatic power of self-effacement, 
richly manifested in ' St. Simeon Stylites,' and that depth of 
sympathy with other minds through which alone poetry of 
the first order can be produced. It had brought him 
clearer reasoning power, and the faculty of sustained 
thought, which moves through the rapids of more tur- 
bulent emotion to a goal defined and constantly kept in 
view. It had crystallised fancy and imagination into a 
calmer philosophy of life, a philosophy of faith and un- 
shaken confidence in the eternal progress of existence 
towards the ' far-off divine event,' the ultimate realisation of 



EARLY YEARS IN LONDON 69 

God's best. With him there was 'no room for sense of 
wrong : ' for ' love that never found his earthly close ' the 
sequel was no eternity of despair, no woeful retrospect 
melting into tears, but a repose of the will, that finds its 
comfort — not in a rebellious memory — nor yet in entire 
forgetfulness. Ulysses, after all the wanderings and weari- 
ness of the years, is still unwilling to be idle. 

' 'Tis not too late to seek a newer world . . . 
Tho' much is taken, much abides.' 

The passion and the restlessness of the forsaken lover in 
'Locksley Hall' turn at the last from the prospect of a 
voluptuous life in the far-away Lotosland ; the distance 
beckons him to better things: to the 'crescent promise' 
of a braver life among his own people. The contest of 
' The Two Voices ' of faith and doubt leaves the poet with 
a hidden hope for consolation. Even 'The Vision of Sin' 
ends in a dream of hope, where 

' On the glimmering limit far withdrawn 
God made Himself an awful rose of dawn. ' 

It was a poetry of faith and hope, not faithful and hopeful 
through an absence of doubt, but rising to its consumma- 
tion through its sense of the insufficiency of doubt to the 
needs of life. The natural attitude of the human mind is 
an attitude of hope ; despair is the surest sign of disease. 
But the hope that is born of despair is the strongest, because 
the most human ; and it is in this very arguing down of 
doubt that the power and the permanence of Tennyson's 
poetry lies. The greatest of his poems have ever been 
those in which he has manifested this comfortable creed. 

' Locksley Hall ' has been called the poem of a boy's 
passion, and treated as a piece of sentiment which strikes a 
false note to the ear of maturer judgment. There is some 
truth in the criticism : we all love ' Locksley Hall ' best at 
the period of our first impulsive love. There is something 
over-ecstatic, something that protests too much for the 
stronger passion of manhood. But the nature that can 
return upon itself, and live in the past, will never read the 
poem without a pang. It brings us to boyhood again, to 
the hour when the small things of life seemed so great, and 



70 ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON 

the loss that was really a blessing appeared to be a curse. 
And it is well to live in the past sometimes. 

One little bibliographical note is, perhaps, worth preserva- 
tion. Mr. Edmund Gosse has in his possession a copy 
of the first edition of the 1842 poems which belonged to 
B. W. Procter (Barry Cornwall). The former owner has 
inserted in manuscript between the nineteenth and twentieth 
couplets of 'Locksley Hall' (vol. ii. p. 96) the following 
lines : — 

' In the hall there hangs a painting, Amy's arms are round my neck, 
Happy children in a sunbeam, sitting on the ribs of wreck. 

In my life there is a picture : she that clasp'd my neck is flown, 
I am left within the shadow, sitting on the wreck alone/ 

continuing, ' O my cousin, shallow-hearted.' 

Now, these lines reappeared in 1886, in 'Locksley Hall 
Sixty Years After,' with two slight alterations. In the later 
version the first line runs 'Amy's arms about my neck,' 
while in the second couplet the verbs are in the past tense. 
Apparently they stood in the first draft of ' Locksley Hall,' 
and were cancelled when the manuscript went to press, 
eventually forming the germ from which the second poem 
grew. The point is not without interest as an indication of 
the way in which a poem is born and developed. 

But beside, and very little below his greatest, the volumes 
contained other poems of strength and beauty. 'The 
Gardener's Daughter ' and ' Dora ' are calm, picturesque 
idylls of the countryside, showing that sympathy with the 
world's humblest which is one of the surest proofs of 
greatness. The 'Conclusion' to the ' May Queen ' sounded 
the final note of hope and resignation which, while it was 
characteristic of the author, brought the poem at the same 
time to a more artistic completion. And perhaps the 
finest poem in the two volumes, and certainly the most 
interesting from subsequent association, was ' Morte 
d'Arthur,' afterwards incorporated, without the prologue 
and epilogue, with their charming air of personality, into 
'The Passing of Arthur,' where it may be more fittingly 
considered in its relation to the rest of the ' Idylls.' But it 
is interesting to notice in this context a poem written by 



EARLY YEARS IN LONDON 71 

Tennyson in a private album, and written without a date, 
which contains one thought which he afterwards conveyed 
bodily into the ' Morte d' Arthur.' The album lines are as 
follows : — 

' Over the bleak world flies the wind 

And clatters in the sapless trees. 
From cloud to cloud through darkness blind 

Swift stars scud over sounding seas. 
I look ; the showery skirts unbind ; 

Mars by the lonely Pleiades 
Burns overhead ; with brows declined 

I muse — I wander from my peace, 
Dividing still the rapid mind 

This way, and that, in search of ease.' 

The reader will recall the picture of Bedivere, with 
Excalibur in his hand, hesitating for a moment to cast it 
into the mere — 

' This way and that dividing the swift mind.' 

The effect of the new volume was instantaneous. From 
a graceful singer, stringing together with ease and elegance 
a series of harmonious melodies, Tennyson became a poet 
with a message to mankind. From the uncertain position 
of a satellite in the ' milky-way of Keats' he grew into a 
star of the first magnitude. Among many proofs of the 
estimation which the volume brought him stands a very 
calm and critical analysis of his position, which appeared in 
1844 m Richard Hengist Home's A New Spirit of the Age. 
The second volume, which had for frontispiece a copy of 
Lawrence's portrait of Tennyson, the first portrait ever 
drawn, opens with a detailed discussion of the new poet's 
performance. Home blows a trumpet of no uncertain 
sound in praise of Tennyson. He claims for him a position 
'as a true poet of the highest order,' and considers his reputa- 
tion to be ' thoroughly established.' He notices the gradual 
development of Tennyson from Keats, and distinguishes 
between natural development and unnatural imitation. 
Tennyson, he finds, has a voice of his own. ' In music 
and colour he was equalled by Shelley; but in form he 
stands unrivalled.' Finally, though he believes Tennyson 
( may do greater things than he has done,' he does not 



72 ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON 

expect it. And he ends : ' If he do no more, he has already 
done enough to deserve the lasting love and admiration of 
posterity.' 

In the same year Elizabeth Barrett, hurling off ' Lady 
Geraldine's Courtship ' at the top of her pace, to fill an 
empty sheet in the two-volume edition of her poems (itself 
designed in rivalry to Tennyson's own), classed with the 
most attractive literature of the day ' Tennyson's enchanted 
reverie.' 

It was towards the end of 1843 that Elizabeth Barrett 
was first introduced to Tennyson, and the introduction was 
effected strangely enough. An American friend of the 
poetess sent her a critique of the 1842 volumes, with the 
request that she would forward it to Tennyson. As she 
had never met him, and as, moreover, the notice was not 
unreservedly genial, she felt some compunction ; but at last 
she took courage. The result was in every way gratifying. 
Tennyson wrote her a most amiable letter, and from this 
time her interest in him increased. Indeed, when R. H. 
Home was occupied on A Neiv Spirit of the Age, Elizabeth 
Barrett assisted him in his work, and showed especial 
interest in writing him her estimate of Tennyson. Her 
admiration was so sincere that she found it difficult to 
analyse him, and summed up her opinion in the decision 
that he was 'a divine poet.' She had but one reservation : 
she preferred Leigh Hunt's ' Godiva ' to Tennyson's. 

Another little picture rises to the mind's eye in connec- 
tion with the rapid appreciation of Tennyson's work, — the 
scene of the luncheon-party in Cranford where Mr. 
Holbrook, the old bachelor, entertains Miss Matty, Miss 
Pole, and Mary at Woodley. In the afternoon the host 
proposes a walk, and 'as some tree or cloud, or glimpse of 
distant upland pastures struck him, he quoted poetry to 
himself, saying it out loud in a grand sonorous voice, with 
just the emphasis that true feeling and appreciation give. 
We came upon an old cedar-tree, which stood at one end 
of the house : 

"The cedar spreads his dark green layers of shade." 

1 Capital term — layers. Wonderful man ! J muttered Mr. 



EARLY YEARS IN LONDON 73 

Holbrook to himself. And he adds that, when he read the 
review of Tennyson in Blackivood^ he walked seven miles 
to order a copy of the poems. The old man's love for 
nature is caught by the poet's observation, which had seen 
that ash-buds are black in March, — a fact that would escape 
many a gardener's notice. 

Tennyson had, indeed, a message for every sort and 
condition of man. 

In the year following the appearance of the Poems 
Southey died, and the Laureateship was vacant. There was 
never any serious notion that Tennyson would be selected 
as Southey's successor ; but the increase in his reputation 
is attested by the fact that he appears among the possible 
candidates in the humorous competition recounted in Sir 
Theodore Martin and Professor Aytoun's ' Bon Gaultier 
Ballads.' The parodists equip him with a poem in his 
own favour which catches a happy echo of his manner : — 

1 Who would not be 
The Laureate bold, 
With his butt of sherry 
To keep him merry, 

And nothing to do but to pocket his gold ? 
'Tis I would be the Laureate bold.' 

And there is yet another occasion interesting for its early 
connection of two names which the later years drew 
together into very close communion. In the year following 
the appearance of the Poems > an Oxford Debating Society 
called 'The Decade' discussed in Oriel common room the 
proposition that ' Alfred Tennyson is the greatest English 
poet of the age.' The society included at the time much of 
the most promising talent in the University ; and the claim 
of Wordsworth to a position higher than that of his sub- 
sequent successor was vigorously pleaded by Arthur Hugh 
Clough, who two years before had been elected to an Oriel 
fellowship. Clough seems to have found in Tennyson a 
fault — which was fairly attributable to some of his earlier 
work — a certain conscious straining after effect, a sensuous 
inclination to melody, and a neglect of matter in the culti- 
vation of manner. But in Wordsworth he recognised, 
together with an occasional tendency to prose, a spon- 



74 ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON 

taneous utterance of good things without consciousness of 
their goodness. 

The two rivals of 'The Decade' debate met, it is not 
without interest to note, in the same year, at the house of 
Moxon the publisher. Tennyson's opinion of the Poet 
Laureate is not recorded ; but Wordsworth, in a letter to 
Professor Reid of Philadelphia, expresses his thorough 
recognition of the younger man's genius, generously de- 
claring him ' decidedly the first of our living poets.' 

The admiration of Oxford was even surpassed by the 
affection of Chelsea. Mrs. Carlyle, sending Tennyson's 
autograph, together with those of Dickens and Lord Lytton, 
to Miss Welsh, declared Tennyson to be ' the greatest 
genius of the three,' and begged her friend to read ' Ulysses,' 
1 Dora,' and 'The Vision of Sin,' when she would find that 
he was not overrated. ' He is a very handsome man, 
besides ! ' she adds, womanlike, i and a noble-hearted one, 
with something of the gipsy in his appearance, which for 
me is perfectly charming ! ' 

Carlyle's own description of his soul's ' Brother,' as he 
called him, is even more vivid, sketched in with his crude, 
powerful touch : 

' A great shock of rough, dusty-dark hair ; bright, laughing, hazel 
eyes ; massive aquiline face, most massive yet most delicate ; of sallow 
brown complexion, almost Indian-looking ; clothes cynically loose, 
free and easy; smokes infinite tobacco. His voice is musically metallic 
— fit for loud laughter and piercing wail, and all that may lie between ; 
speech and speculation free and plenteous ; I do not meet, in these late 
decades, such company over a pipe. ' 

The verdict of his Cambridge friends was becoming the 
verdict of the wider world beyond ; and the days of Tenny- 
son's uncertainty were over. 



CHAPTER V 

THE BEGINNINGS OF FAME 

Literary success always requires two elements for its 
composition : there must be genius in the author, and there 
must be opportunity. A writer born after his due time, 
however unquestionable his power, escapes notice alto- 
gether : or at the best receives the faint praise bestowed 
upon an old-fashioned product, which has only the merit 
of curiosity to commend it. A writer born before his 
time is attacked as a revolutionist, or ridiculed as a mad- 
man : it is not till the next generation that his work is 
understood and appreciated. Hence it comes that so much 
reputation is posthumous; the author lacked opportunity, 
his time was not yet come. Every now and again a revolu- 
tion in popular sentiment works a revolution in literature : 
the air is full of new thoughts and new ideals, and there is 
need of a man to give utterance to the aspirations of the 
new era. This is the opportunity : this is the moment 
when the true poet and the inspired novelist show the nation 
its natural face in the glass of literature. It is this oppor- 
tunity, and this faculty of seizing the right moment, that 
make the man an artist, and his work the voice of an epoch. 
For ten years the genius of Tennyson had lacked ac- 
knowledgment, when in 1842 he burst into sudden fame; and 
the increase in his reputation surpassed the improvement in 
his workmanship. The ten years' silence had strengthened 
and matured his talents, it is true ; but many of the poems, 
which were on every one's lips in 1842, had been sneered 
at as effeminate and unintelligible ten years before. What 
was the reason of this sudden change of front, this instan- 
taneous admiration for what had hitherto been neglected ? 
The reason is near at hand ; the ten years that intervened 
had brought the opportunity. At the moment in which 

Tennyson published his two volumes in 1842 a new era 

75 



76 ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON 

was opening to literature; and he, who in 1832 had been 
ten years before his time, was now discovered to be speaking 
with the tongue of the angel of the age. He had found 
the right moment, and had seized upon it. The French 
Revolution had been followed by the outburst of fierce, 
unrestrained licence, which animated the poetry of Byron 
and Shelley. The reaction followed. The Lake School 
of poetry slipped to the other extreme, to an un impassioned 
simplicity and pure innocence, which proved, in their turn, 
weak and unsatisfying. The mind of the age was nauseated 
by a somewhat colourless propriety ; Miss Edge worth and 
Miss Jane Austen were being elbowed from their book- 
shelves by Dickens, Thackeray, and Bulwer Lytton. There 
was need for a new poet, too. The time was ripe for a 
literature that should fuse together the characteristics of 
the last two epochs, should temper Shelley with Wordsworth, 
and dilute Byron with Rogers. It wanted a poetry, too, 
which, while it worked the old elements into combination, 
should take to itself the spirit and sentiment of the moment. 
The hour was an hour of struggle, of contest between doubt 
and faith, an hour of religious controversy and scepticism. 
But the prevailing note was faith, faith rising like a phoenix 
out of the ashes of doubt, and soaring heavenward. This 
was the spirit of the hour : it was also the spirit of 
Tennyson's poetry. 

It is interesting to note how the field was clearing for 
him. In 1822 Wordsworth issued the 'Ecclesiastical 
Sonnets,' but after that date 'Yarrow Revisited,' in 1835, 
was his only important publication. In 1834 Coleridge 
died after nine years' silence ; and Crabbe, the minute 
photographer of poetry, had then been dead two years. 
Samuel Rogers's last great work, ' Italy/ was published in 
1828, and Southey was devoting himself exclusively to 
prose at the time of Tennyson's appearance. The same, 
was true of Thomas Campbell, and also of Moore, who in 
1842 had published no poetry for nearly twenty years. 
Sir Walter Scott had died in 1832, and two slighter, 
but extremely popular writers, Mrs. Hemans and Letitia 
Elizabeth Landon (L.E.L.), in 1835 an d 1832 respectively. 
The opportunity had come for the new poetry. It was to 



THE BEGINNINGS OF FAME 77 

be idyllic with Wordsworth, and dramatic with Byron ; but 
it was to be something more than either of these. It was 
to be powerfully, mercilessly psychological, probing to the 
heart of the thought, w T ith its finger upon the pulse of the 
passion. It was to be dramatically introspective, laying 
bare the souls of the characters it studied. The oppor- 
tunity had come, and the poets came with it. ' Pauline,' 
which appeared in 1833, was one evidence of the new T 
spirit; 'The Drama of Exile,' published in 1844, was 
another ; and a third was the two-volume collection of 
Poems by Alfred Tennyson, issued in 1842. Robert 
Browning, Elizabeth Barrett, and Alfred Tennyson were 
the voices of the new era \ and the clearest and most direct 
utterance was that of Tennyson. The age recognised him 
first as its prophet; and, as soon as it knew him, it welcomed 
him. 

The unique position of Tennyson, as an influence drawing 
together the poetry of the earlier and the later years of the 
century, is not, perhaps, sufficiently recognised. No poet 
has so singularly combined the attributes of the old and the 
new. Without in any case borrowing from his predecessors, 
he softened and broadened their manner into a tone which 
prepared poetry for its later development, a development 
to which he continually gave the first, half-latent impulse. 
The domestic idyll of Crabbe assumed a less rigid form 
in 'Dora'; the wild, graphic dreams of Coleridge smote 
themselves into the second movement of ' The Vision of 
Sin.' In 'Edward Gray' the poet caught and mellowed 
the accent of the domestic ballad, whose best example 
may be found in 'Barbara Allen.' 'Requiescat' is pure 
Wordsworth : what is not Shelley in ' The Lover's Tale ' is 
Keats. Meanwhile the new poetry was foretold in many 
suggestive instances. ' St. Simeon Stylites ' was the first of 
those dramatic monologues to which Robert Browning 
subsequently lent the vigour and unfettered strength of his 
imagination. ' The Sisters ' spoke with the tongue of 
Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Mr. William Morris : ' Fatima ' 
was the mother of ' Dolores ' and ' Faustine.' But nowhere 
are the vivid pictures of the pre-Raphaelite school more 
brilliantly forecast than in that extraordinary lyric, 'The 



78 ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON 

Lady of Shalott.' This singular poem is referred to in 
more than one context in the present study, but its con- 
sideration here may help us to a clearer understanding of 
Tennyson's intermediary position. The mirror into which 
the Lady gazes is, in the first place, of course, the mirror 
which always stood behind the tapestry, whose face was 
turned to the glass, so that the worker could see the 
effect of her stitches without moving from her seat. But 
it has another use. Every view which the earlier part of 
the poem presents is cast upon the mirror. Scene follows 
scene as in a camera hicida, vivid, detailed, delicate. This 
is the exact attitude of the pre-Raphaelites. The clear 
microcosm, reflected in the mirror, is the earth as it appears 
to them, every tiny part of the picture standing out in crisp, 
individual relief. A stranger prophecy of a phenomenon 
to come is nowhere to be found in poetry. And directly 
the mirror cracks, the whole spirit of the poem changes. 
Suddenly we are in the open air with the Lady : the 
breeze is in our faces, we are out upon the stream. 
The pictures are no longer the pictures of the mirror ; 
they are the sounds and sights of living, moving nature. 
And with the end comes again the pre-Raphaelite touch, 
the subtle art of sinking which lent such a charm to their 
manner : 

' He said : " She has a lovely face." ' 

It is word for word as Rossetti would have said it. 

It is the same with ' Sir Galahad.' The rich, sensuous 
side of the Catholic ritual is portrayed with a wealth of 
luxurious colour : 

' When down the stormy crescent goes, 

A light before me swims, 
Between dark stems the forest glows, 

I hear a noise of hymns : 
Then by some secret shrine I ride ; 

I hear a voice, but none are there ; 
The stalls are void, the doors are wide, 

The tapers burning fair. 
Fair gleams the snowy altar-cloth, 

The silver vessels sparkle clean, 
The shrill bell rings, the censer swings, 

And solemn chaunts resound between.' 



THE BEGINNINGS OF FAME 79 

To hold together the threads of two poetic periods, to 
draw the one into harmony with the other, is to prove 
one's-self a poet of poets. An imitator can excel in a 
single style ; a genius alone can be consummate in all. At 
the moment, Tennyson's position could not, in the nature 
of things, be wholly understood. But this singular birth 
of a new power from the old could not fail to amaze. His 
critics could not analyse at once : like Elizabeth Barrett, 
they stood in silence to wonder ; or with the horde of the 
less enlightened, waited a moment to mock. But friendly 
or unfriendly, they felt the novelty of the influence, and 
acknowledged the coming of a poetry which was unlike 
anything they had seen before. And so, with but few to 
question him, the poet passed into fame. 

His sudden rise into greatness, however, brought with it 
for Tennyson none of the dangers of a reputation eagerly 
thrust upon him. The natural temperament of the man 
resisted the temptations of fame. The old shyness, the 
old relapses into long silence, were still the complaint of 
his friends. Moreover, he was seriously unwell, and his 
condition caused grave anxiety to his well-wishers. ' If 
anything were to happen to Tennyson,' wrote Elizabeth 
Barrett, 'the world should go into mourning.' He was 
obliged to undergo a course of hydropathy, which was 
thoroughly distasteful to him. Bios a/Jtos he called it : and 
it left him even less eager for society than before. ' Hy- 
dropathy,' said FitzGerald, ' has done its worst : he writes 
the names of his friends in water ! ' At the same time he 
is reported as 'in very good looks'; and Lawrence was 
anxious to paint a portrait of the rising poet. Many men 
would have been carried away by the pride of admiration ; 
but Tennyson preferred to reap the harvest of his fame in 
the society of the friends he loved. Foremost among 
these were the Carlyles, and with the Chelsea philoso- 
pher he spent many evenings, smoking 'the strongest 
and most stinking tobacco out of a small clay pipe,' 
which was between his teeth, ' on an average, nine 
hours a day/ One night in especial lived in Carlyle's 
memory. Tennyson stayed late, forgot his stick, and the 
Carlyles dismissed him by singing ' Macpherson's Fare- 



80 ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON 

well,' a 'tune/ said Carlyle, 'rough as hemp, but strong 
as a lion ' : 

{ Farewell, ye dungeons dark and strong, 
The wretch's destinie ! 
Macpherson's time will not be long 
On yonder gallows-tree. 

Sae rantingly, sae wantonly, 

Sae dauntingly gaed he : 

He played a spring and danced it round, 

Below the gallows-tree.' 

And the rude tune and stirring words moved Tennyson so 
much that his ' face grew darker ' and his lips quivered. 

Carlyie's appreciation of Tennyson was a thing of 
growth, as affection for a reserved character is wont to be. 
There is a well-known story that tells of Sir John Simeon's 
introduction to the young poet by Carlyle at Bath House, 
when the philosopher, pointing Tennyson out to his friend, 
remarked, ' There he sits upon a dung heap, surrounded 
by innumerable dead dogs ; ' the poet's inclination for 
classical subjects suggesting the indecorous simile. But 
when once they knew each other, Carlyle was the first to 
acknowledge his mistake. — * Eh ! that wasn't a very lumin- 
ous description of you,' he said, with a laugh. 

The beginnings of fame came to Tennyson very quietly ; 
and all the while he was busy on 'In Memoriam.' Fitz- 
Gerald, always a little fearful for the future, always looking 
back with regret to the early lyrics with their melody and 
love of colour, heard of the project with some perturbation. 
' Don't you think,' he wrote to W. B. Donne, ' the world 
wants other notes than elegiac now ? " Lycidas " is the 
utmost length an elegiac should reach. But Spedding 
praises : and I suppose the elegiacs will see daylight, public 
daylight, one day.' 

The work was done, now in London, now at the sea by • 
Beachy Head ; or again at Cheltenham, in ' a nasty house 
in Bellevue Place/ as the poet himself wrote. Hither Mrs. 
Tennyson had moved, after a three years' sojourn at Boxley 
near Maidstone, in 1844. The mental occupation left 
Tennyson restless and uncertain, at one time half-decided 
to start for Cornwall, at another for Switzerland, and finally 



THE BEGINNINGS OF FAME 81 

hesitating whether he should go anywhere at all. When 
he went into society, which he did but seldom, he mixed 
as little as possible with the surroundings. At some 
theatricals, got up by Dickens and Forster, he was met 
by Mrs. Carlyle, who found him in a long, dim passage, 
leaning against the wall, apparently attempting to fall asleep. 
To her enthusiastic greeting he gave a characteristic re- 
sponse. ' I should like to know who you are,' he said ; 
' I know that I know you, but I cannot tell your name.' 
But when once the ice was broken, he was genial enough ; 
and the following Sunday he appeared at Chelsea in a cab, 
bent upon spending the evening alone with Mrs. Carlyle, 
a little project that was frustrated by the presence of 
visitors. ' However, he stayed till eleven.' 

But his retiring modesty could not keep him altogether 
in the background. He was frequently to be found with 
Rogers, 'the dean of poets,' as Crabb Robinson called him ; 
and at his house on January 31st, 1845, he met Moxon, 
Kenny, the dramatic poet, Lushington, Spedding, and 
Crabb Robinson himself at dinner.- It was 'an interesting 
party of eight,' and Tennyson and Robinson had a long 
talk over Goethe. One lady, who was asked especially 
to meet Tennyson, arrived late ; and after a little mystery 
proved to be the Hon. Mrs. Norton, about this time the 
centre of much social discussion. Robinson found her 
graceful and accomplished, though she 'stepped a little 
near his prejudices by a harsh sentence about Goethe.' 
At Rogers's, too, Tennyson met at different times Leigh 
Hunt, Landor, Tom Moore, and Mr. W. E. Gladstone. 

So, by degrees, Tennyson dropped into society of the 
most prominent Englishmen of the day, and his distinction 
was so generally recognised, and the value of his work so 
widely appreciated, that a circle of his friends conceived 
a scheme which should free him from pecuniary embarrass- 
ment, and enable him to devote himself to literature with- 
out the obligation of earning enough to procure him the 
bare necessities of life. It was proposed to obtain for 
him a pension, which should be sufficient to keep him in 
moderate competence ; and, mainly through the energy 
of Milnes, Sir Robert Peel, then Prime Minister, was 

F 



82 ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON 

approached upon the subject. The outset must have been 
a little discouraging to the young enthusiasts, for Sir Robert 
(it is a well-known story) had never heard of the poet at all. 
Milnes, quite undaunted, sent the Prime Minister a copy of 
the 1842 volumes, with 'Locksley Hall' and ' Ulysses' 
marked. There was a rival in the field in the person of 
Sheridan Knowles, with whom Peel was equally unfamiliar ; 
and Milnes in a letter accompanying the poems strongly 
advocated the gift of the pension to Tennyson, pointing 
out that it was in the interest of English literature that his 
faculties should not be ' diverted from their proper use by 
the sordid anxiety of a struggle for existence.' His efforts 
were rewarded, and a pension of ^200 a year was bestowed 
upon the author of ' Ulysses,' a poem, the high qualities of 
which the Prime Minister immediately recognised. 

A beneficence of this kind, however, could scarcely pass 
without some unfavourable comment ; and in the autumn 
of 1845 an anonymous poem, entitled 'The New Timon : 
a Romance of London,' satirised with an almost venomous 
candour the ' quartering on the public purse ' of a young 
man without either wife or family. The poem was gene- 
rally known to be the work of Edward Lytton Bulwer, 
afterwards Lord Lytton ; and that it was sufficiently severe 
may be gathered from the following brief extract : 

' Let schoolmiss Alfred vent her chaste delight 
In darling little rooms so warm and bright, 
Chant " I 'm a-weary " in infectious strain, 
And catch " the blue fly singing i' the pane." 
Tho' praised by critics and admired by Blues, 
Tho' Peel with pudding plump the puling Muse, 
Tho' Theban taste the Saxon purse controls, 
And pensions Tennyson while starves a Knowles . . . ' 

It was an ungenerous attack, perhaps; and Tennyson 
unfortunately allowed himself to reply in a set of verses 
which appeared over the signature ' Alcibiades ' in Punch 
of the 28th of February 1846. 'The New Timon and the 
Poets/ as Tennyson called his reply, certainly hit back 
from the shoulder with a will : 

' But you, sir, you are hard to please, 
You never look but half content, 
Nor like a gentleman at ease, 

With moral breadth of temperament. 



THE BEGINNINGS OF FAME 83 

And what with spite, and what with fears. 

You cannot let a body be, 
It 's always singing in your ears, 

" They call this man as great as me ! " 

What profits how to understand 

The merits of a spotless shirt — 
A dapper boot — a little hand — 

If half the little soul is dirt ? ' 

Keen fighting ! But the whole thing is too undignified, and 
one turns with pleasure to the Tennyson of a week after, 
who in the same paper sang his palinode ' Afterthought/ 
which is now included in his poems under the title 
'Literary Squabbles.' 

' And I, too, talk and lose the touch 
I talk of. Surely, after all, 
The noblest answer unto such 
Is perfect stillness when they brawl.' 

It is the poet who speaks there : 

' Dowered with the hate of hate, the scorn of scorn ; ' 

and it is pleasant to remember that the dissentients forgot 
their early quarrel, and were afterwards ready to say the 
handsomest things of one another. 



CHAPTER VI 

FROM THE PRINCESS TO IN MEMORIAM 

During the year which saw this little passage of arms the 
Poems ran into a fourth edition, in which 'The Golden 
Year ' was first added ; and the following year witnessed 
the appearance of another of Tennyson's most notable 
poems, 'The Princess,' published by Edward Moxon in 
1847. It is generally considered that the germ of 'The 
Princess' is to be found in Dr. Johnson's ' Rasselas,' the 
following quotation pointing to the probability of its in- 
spiration : ' The Princess thought that of all sublunary 
things knowledge was the best. She desired first to learn 
all sciences, and then proposed to found a college of learned 
women, in which she would preside.' Other suggestions 
have attributed to Defoe and Margaret Cavendish's ' Female 
Academy ' the inspiration which does not actually require 
an original. It is simple and natural enough to stand 
alone. The germ, whatever it may have been, developed 
by degrees. No poem of Tennyson's has been so much 
corrected, or so often re-edited as this. The first edition 
was followed by a second in the next year, the new issue 
being dedicated to Henry Lushington, with whom the poet 
was staying in September 1847. The corrections so far 
were but few, and these merely verbal ; but with the third 
edition, issued in 1850, the work underwent radical changes. 
The songs were added, and the Prologue and Conclusion 
remodelled. In the following year a fourth edition found 
the second stanza of the first song omitted, the fourth song 
altered, and the passages alluding to the Prince's ' weird 
seizures' introduced. A fifth reprint in 1853 received a 
further addition of fifteen lines, forming the fourth para- 
graph of the prologue. 

The scene of the opening, I am informed, was Maidstone 
Park, where in 1844 a festival of the Mechanics' Institution 

S4 



FROM THE PRINCESS TO IN MEMORIAM 85 

was held under the patronage of Mr. Lushington. Tennyson 
was himself present on a brilliantly sunny day, the crowd 
amounting to between one and two thousand people. My 
informant, who was present on the occasion, tells me that 
the poet's description of the scene exactly tallies with his 
own memory of the day's proceedings. The dedication to 
Henry Lushington is also interesting, since it was probably 
the outcome of the poet's visit to his friend at the time 
when he was reconsidering the poem for its second edition. 
The friendship between the two was already of some six 
years' standing, and Tennyson appears to have had a very 
high opinion of Lushington's taste. Indeed, he has been 
known to declare that of all the criticism he received from 
his friends, Lushington's was the most suggestive. It must 
have been sympathetic also, since Lushington is reported 
to have known almost the whole of his friend's work by 
heart. 

That ' The Princess ' was ' well liked ' we learn from 
FitzGerald, who, however, could find no good word for 
it himself. 'I am considered,' he wrote to the poet's 
brother Frederick, ' a great heretic for abusing it ; it seems 
to me a wretched waste of power at a time of life when a 
man ought to be doing his best ; and I almost feel hopeless 
about Alfred now. I mean about his doing what he was 
born to do.' FitzGerald's view of what Tennyson was born 
to do is discovered to be a little capricious, however. 
About the same time we find him waking from a study of 
Thucydides to yearn for the spectacle of ' old Hallam ' 
standing to his gun at a Martello tower, while Alfred shared 
his peril and his enthusiasm. 'A more heroic figure to 
lead the defenders of his country could not be.' The 
notion seems a little strained to our estimate of the poet, 
who, at the same time, was not uninterested in public 
events and the life of the world of action. Mr. Aubrey de 
Vere found him, at this very moment, 'very indignant at 
the events in France, crying, "Let us not see a French 
soldier land on the English shore, or I will tear him limb 
from limb." 'Which,' says the lesser poet, 'is a very 
wholesome feeling.' And in the same letter we get a 
characteristic avowal of Tennyson's politics from his own 



FROM THE PRINCESS TO IN MEMORIAM 87 

lips. Aubrey de Vere asked him whether he were a Con- 
servative. ' I believe in progress,' said Tennyson, ' and I 
would conserve the hopes of man. ' It is the very keynote 
of his poetry. 

It is the keynote, too, of 'The Princess.' Through all 
emendations and additions, chiefly interesting to the biblio- 
grapher, the spirit and intention of the poem remain un- 
changed. While it served, on the one hand, as a piece to 
be staged with all the refinement of the poet's taste, backed 
by richly-coloured and harmonious scenery, it carried at its 
heart the poet's invariable creed. The means by which 
the creed is enforced are new ; there are a vein of humour 
and a line of satire running through the poem. But in the 
new setting the old note is the keynote ; the old note of 
gradual development, of steady progress, ' conserving the 
hopes of man.' No social revolution, no impetuous crusade 
for woman's rights, can effect the good that must come by 
degrees. The emancipated woman is no heroine to the 
poet ; he knows a better : 

* Not perfect, nay, but full of tender wants, 
No Angel, but a dearer being, all dipt 
In Angel instincts, breathing Paradise, 
Interpreter between the Gods and men, 
Who look'd all native to her place. . . . 

Happy he 
With such a mother ! Faith in womankind 
Beats with his blood, and trust in all things high 
Comes easy to him, and tho' he trip and fall 
He shall not blind his soul with clay. ' 

It is through the love of such a woman that a man accom- 
plishes his manhood. The affections cannot be repressed : 
without love life is unfinished. 

Apart from this underlying motive, which rises to the 
surface only with the end of the poem, ' The Princess ' is 
little but a dreamy story to read in a garden on a summer 
afternoon, full of music, and fuller still of rich and suggestive 
imagery. The insertion of the songs, delicate and beautiful 
in themselves, serves only to accentuate the artificiality of 
the whole work. Tennyson's detractors are ready to accuse 
him of over-refinement ; of an eye too prone to colour, and 



88 ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON 

an ear too sensitive to melody, losing in their rapture the 
sights and sounds of the real, eternal truth. If such an 
accusation were to be urged, it could, perhaps, be best 
urged from an analysis of ' The Princess.' For here 
Tennyson is in his dreamiest and his least virile mood ; 
here he indulges his senses to the waste of his thought. 
There is a time for everything ; and ' The Princess ' is not 
without its special charm. It is not Tennyson's highest 
work, neither is it his lowest ; it merely requires a sym- 
pathetic temperament in the reader to appear satisfying. 
It needs a temperament of momentary laziness, apt to 
languor and inclined to a light satire, which shall not busy 
itself to wound too deeply. With this mind we shall find 
'The Princess' a storehouse of good things, a midsummer 
day's dream with a spell and fantasy that hold us to the end. 
The story might be translated from the Arabian Nights, 
so picturesque and improbable are the incidents. The 
cold, white Ida in love with study, the adventurous Hilarion 
and his imprudent companions, Lady Blanche ambitious 
and visionary, Psyche tender and womanly — they are char- 
acters from a fairy tale. And mixed with the quaint old- 
world flavour of the whole are curious memories of Cam- 
bridge life, making the poem half a burlesque of university 
rule. There are the statutes : 

* Not for three years to correspond with home ; 
Not for three years to cross the liberties ; 
Not for three years to speak with any men/ 

And again there is the clearer memorv : 

1 Scarce had I ceased when from a tamarisk near 
Two Proctors leapt upon us, crying, " Names : " 
He, standing still, was clutch'd ; but I began 
To thrid the musky-circled mazes, wind 
And double in and out the boles, and race 
By all the fountains ; fleet I was of foot : 
Before me shower'd the rose in flakes ; behind 
I heard the puff'd pursuer. ' 

There is a reminiscence of Cambridge here, and a vivid 
one. And, breaking through the veil of the story ever and 
again, come perfect little pictures of the company, which 
lend an elfin beauty to the fanciful tale : 



FROM THE PRINCESS TO IN ME MORI AM 89 

' Many a little hand * 
Glanced like a touch of sunshine on the rocks, 
Many a light foot shone like a jewel set 
In the dark crag : and then we turn'd, we wound 
About the cliffs, the copses, out and in, 
Hammering and clinking, chattering stony names 
Of shale and hornblende, rag and trap and tuff, 
Amygdaloid and trachyte, till the Sun 
Grew broader towards his death and fell, and all 
The rosy heights came out above the lawns.' 

Truly, it is the dream of a midsummer afternoon, a story of 
infinite imagination and enchantment. 

It is strange that FitzGerald, with his affection for the 
' champagne flavour ' of the early lyrics, should have missed 
the sparkle and the bouquet of ' The Princess.' He even 
called the poem which he could not understand ' accursed/ 
It was not ' a very luminous description ; ' the truer critic 
would have seen the merits, even where he failed to catch 
the temperament. FitzGerald's criticism, however, was 
w T ont to lack illumination. 

A facsimile of the ms. of the songs, complete, except for 
the omission of ' Sweet and Low,' was published by 
Professor Theodore Rand some years ago in the M' Master 
University Monthly, showing some interesting variations 
between the reading of the ms. and the songs as they now 
stand. In the first song, ' As through the land at eve we 
went,' the fourth and thirteenth lines, 



and 



' O we fell out, I know not why,' 



1 O there above the little grave,' 



are omitted. In ' The splendour falls on castle walls ' the 
refrain 

1 Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying, 
Blow, bugle ; answer echoes, dying, dying, dying,' 

is not found, but the word (' Chorus'), inserted in a different 
ink, seems to suggest that a refrain was to follow. The 
fourth song opens in the ms. : 

1 When all among the thundering drums 
Thy soldier in the battle stands,' 



FROM THE PRINCESS TO IN ME MORI AM 91 

and ends, 

* Strike him dead for them and thee. 

Tara ta tantara ! ' 

The fifth song has received only one verbal alteration, — 
' watching ' for ' whispering ' in the second line, and in ' Ask 
me no more,' two slight corrections alone disturb the per- 
fection of its original form. The MS. reads ' With fold on 
fold/ which has since been altered to ' With fold to fold ; ' 
while ' I strove against the stream, and all in vain, was 
originally written, ' I strive against the stream, but all in 
vain.' 

Mr. Percy M. Wallace, in his thoughtful study of ' The 
Princess/ argues with some ingenuity that the songs fall 
readily into the scheme of the whole work ; all six centring 
round the affections, while four have special reference to 
the beauty of married love. The suggestion, if somewhat 
too academic and methodical, is at least worthy of con- 
sideration. 

Between the editions of 'The Princess/ Tennyson found 
time to hurry to Valentia to ' inhale Atlantic breezes and 
listen to the divine sea : ' he also saw a single-volume 
edition of his poems through the press in 1848. It was of 
this visit to Valentia that he used to say, as Professor 
Stanford has recounted : ' I looked out over the ocean with 
all the revolutions in Europe behind me.' During the next 
year he printed little ; the verses ' To / 

* You might have won the Poet's name/ 

which appeared in The Examiner on March 24th, being his 
only publication. He was busy on ' In Memoriam/ which 
absorbed all his energy. FitzGerald saw him often, and 
found him ' the same noble and droll fellow he used to be/ 
and they discussed ' Pendennis ' together. Alfred thought 
it ' quite delicious/ and ' so mature/ and delivered the 
criticism 'over the fire,' spreading his great hand out. At 
this time he was in chambers in Lincoln's Inn Fields, 
at number 58, and spent such time as was not given to 
work in visits to the Lushingtons, and dinners with Fitz- 
Gerald, Frederick Denison Maurice, and other friends. 
Among these others was Mr. Coventry Patmore, who first 



92 ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON 

met Tennyson at the Procters' in 1846. The author of 
6 The Angel in the House ' had been inspired to a fresh en- 
thusiasm for poetry, which he had neglected since his 
boyhood for a study of the Exact Sciences, by the appear- 
ance of the Poems in 1842. From that time he was most 
anxious to meet Tennyson: and, when they met, they 
found each other sympathetic, and were continually together. 
Their names are connected by one of the most engrossing 
anecdotes which Tennyson's life affords, and one which, I 
believe, has not yet been told in print. 

About the time that ' The Princess ' was engaging the 
attention of London, Tennyson left the city for a visit to 
the country. One morning, Mr. Coventry Patmore, then 
occupied at the British Museum, received a letter from his 
friend, saying that he had left, in the drawer of his lodging- 
house dressing-table, the entire and only manuscript of ' In 
Memoriam/ begging Patmore, moreover, to rescue it for 
him. Patmore hurried to the lodgings, to find the room in 
the possession of a new tenant, and the landlady very un- 
willing to have cupboards and drawers ransacked. It was 
not without much persuasion that Patmore was admitted to 
the room, where he found the manuscript still untouched. 

This identical copy was afterwards given by Tennyson to 
Sir John Simeon, and is — at the moment at which these 
words are written — still in Lady Simeon's possession. 

Tennyson's carelessness with regard to his manuscript 
seems to have grown into a habit. Two similar instances 
are recorded by Dr. Japp. The MS. of Poems, chiefly 
Lyrical 'was, we are told, lost and reproduced from memory ; 
while section xxxix. of ' In Memoriam,' ' Old warder of 
these buried bones/ having slipped into the back of a 
writing desk, was not included in its proper context until 
the issue of Messrs. Strahan's pocket-volume edition in 
1870. 

But to return to 1849. It was a quiet year — a time of 
rest before a period of movement : for the year after was to 
be full of interest. In 1850 he published ' In Memoriam/ 
married, and became Poet Laureate. This year also saw a 
sixth edition of the Poems, and a third of ' The Princess.' 
It was the most noteworthy year of his life. 



FROM THE PRINCESS TO IN MEMORIAM 



93 



In the early months he was in his chambers at Lincoln's 
Inn, busy on the songs for < The Princess : ' his friend's 
letters contain no allusion to the prospect of his marriage. 
They found him unchanged, full of his ' dear old stories and 
many new ones,' but a little aged. ' I wish I could take 




INTERIOR OF SHIPLAKE CHURCH. 



twenty years off Alfred's shoulders,' said FitzGerald, 'and 
set him up again in his youthful glory ! ' But FitzGerald 
was always recurring to those youthful performances, and 
the best years of Tennyson's work were yet to come. 

Early in 1850 Moxon published ' In Memoriam,' at which 



94 ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON 

the poet had been at work for a long while. The venture 
was viewed by his friends with some apprehension. Five 
years before FitzGerald had deprecated the idea, believing 
that ' Lycidas ' was as long as an elegiac poem should be, 
and that the public preferred other notes. Spedding had 
praised the poem, however; and though within a few 
months of its appearance Tennyson seems to have intended 
to print it for private circulation only, he decided eventually 
to give it full publicity. It was issued anonymously as a 
volume of 210 pages, with seven pages of introductory 
matter, and the second and third edition differed only from 
the first in their correction of two actual misprints. The 
poem was scarcely before the public when Wordsworth died, 
on the twenty-third of April, and the literary world began to 
discuss the succession to the Laureateship. There were 
several candidates in the field. Samuel Rogers was ap- 
proached upon the subject, but was unwilling to accept the 
position : Barry Cornwall, too, preferred to stand aloof. 
Leigh Hunt and Dr. C. Mackay were each considered to 
have a chance, and Browning's name was also mentioned. 
Leigh Hunt, when the final choice fell on Tennyson, con 
fessed that, though he believed the selection a wise one, he 
was a little disappointed that his own claim had proved 
insufficient. The Athenceum suggested that, as a woman 
was on the throne, a woman might fitly be Laureate, and 
on this ground advocated the appointment of Elizabeth 
Barrett Browning. 

The wonder and babble of the discussion were in full 
swing when on the thirteenth of June Tennyson was 
married. His wife was Miss Emily Sellwood, niece of Sir 
John Franklin, and daughter of a solicitor at Horncastle, 
where she and the poet had met during his Lincolnshire 
days. She was the eldest of three daughters, the youngest 
of whom married Tennyson's brother Charles. Her mother 
had died at the early age of twenty-eight, when Tennyson 
was but seven years old. x\lfred and his wife were married 
at Shiplake Church, a picturesque building, rich in carved 
oak and stained glass, not far from Caversham ; the bride's 
father, some of the Lushingtons, and two or three other 
friends, being the only guests. Miss Mary Russell Mitford 



FROM THE PRINCESS TO IN MEMORIAM 95 

gives the following picturesque description of the church : 
* The tower, half clothed with ivy, stands with its charming 
vicarage and pretty vicarage garden on a high eminence 
overhanging one of the finest bends of the great river. A 
woody lane leads from the church to the bottom of the 
chalk cliff, one side of which stands out from the road 
below like a promontory, surmounted by the laurel hedges 




SHIPLAKE RECTORY.^ 



and flowery arbours of the vicarage garden, and crested by 
a noble cedar of Lebanon/ 

After their marriage the Tennysons settled at Twicken- 
ham, at Chapel House, standing at the corner of Montpelier 
Row, which runs from the Thames to the Richmond Road. 
It is characteristic of the poet that when Milnes offered, on 
the occasion of the wedding, to place at his disposal for life 
a wing of his house at Fryston, Tennyson did not accept 

* The letter T marks the room occupied by Tennyson during the days 
immediately preceding his marriage. 



96 ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON 

the offer. One almost wonders that Milnes should have 
been so far carried away by friendly enthusiasm as to 
suggest it. 

Among the earliest of Tennyson's friends who met his 
wife was Spedding; and he was charmed with her. But 
the old circle complained that Alfred now withdrew more 
than ever into himself. 'You know,' says FitzGerald, 'he 
never writes, nor indeed cares a halfpenny about one.' The 
same critic was sadly discontented with ' In Memoriam,' too, 
for though he found it full of the finest things, he thought 
it monotonous, with ' the sense of being evolved by a poetic 
machine of the highest order.' 

Tennyson was not keeping altogether to himself, how- 
ever; he and his bride were moving about among his 
friends, and in the November of the same year Carlyle met 
them both at Trent Lodge in Cumberland. Then this 
notable year closed with honour; for in the early winter 
the questionings of the spring were silenced, and Tennyson 
was finally appointed Laureate, the warrant being dated 
November 19th. His formal installation took place on the 
6th of March 1851 ; and his first appearance at Court was 
made in Rogers's Court dress, borrowed for the occasion. 

Wordsworth, it is said, had worn the same suit, and both 
poets had dressed at Rogers's house before the ceremony. 

The appointment of Tennyson to the Laureateship was 
viewed at the time with approbation ; indeed, during the 
discussion of the preceding months the Press had very 
generally agreed that his genius singled him out as the man 
most fitted to the post. In the light of later knowledge 
this opinion seems inevitable ; but we have to remember 
that in 1850 Tennyson's work was represented by but two 
volumes of poems and 'The Princess.' Almost the whole 
of his most characteristic work was written after his accept- 
ance of the Laureateship, and in the very moment of his 
promotion he published a poem which established his posi- 
tion upon a new and permanent basis. 

'In Memoriam,' the poem upon which Tennyson had 
been occupied for some ten years or more, may be divided 
for purposes of analysis into five parts, but the whole poem 
is continuous and connected. The connection is, in places, 



FROM THF PRINCESS TO IN MEMORIAM 97 

a little difficult to trace, and the course of thought obscure, 
but — though the mind breaks, with each new division, into 
a new field of reflection, — turning, as it were, abruptly into 
a fresh channel, — the course from point to point is actually 
unbroken. A brief review of the poem will serve to show 
the development and direction of the argument. 

The poet, at the opening, recalls a creed which he had 
held for law — that out of the troubles of life men may rise 
to something better than they were before the day of trouble 
came. But now he finds the creed hard to hold : it is so 
difficult to return to comfort after loss. He compares his 
life to a yew-tree among the graves, which, though spring 
may return for it, as for the whole of nature, presents the 
same gloomy spectacle with every season. So Sorrow, sur- 
veying his life, can find for him no second spring. For 
now Sorrow is always with him, the ' Priestess in the vaults 
of Death ' round which his memory hovers, never leaving 
him for a moment. And when he cries out to her, his cry 
seems a sin • for any words he can utter fall short of the 
intensity of his suffering. Yet he must cry out, for the 
effort seems to deaden the pain. To cry out, indeed, is his 
only comfort ; for the commonplace expressions of consola- 
tion are empty and barren, 

1 Vacant chaff well meant for grain.' 

But at times even this comfort fails him ; he must feed his 
sorrow by the actual sight of the places where he used to 
meet his friend — by forcing on himself the truth of his loss. 
So he goes to the house where Hallam used to live, and 
here the loneliness of it all breaks in upon him with renewed 
force. The whole scene is melancholy : 

* He is not here ; but far away 
The noise of life begins again, 
And ghastly thro' the drizzling rain 
On the bald street breaks the blank day.' 

Standing desolate, he compares himself to a lover who has 
hastened to his love's home to find her away. And from 
the absence his mind glides to the home-coming; he 
pictures the ship that is bringing Arthur's body to England. 
He fancies the course of its passage, and himself watching 

G 



98 ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON 

for the first sight of it. Then he remembers that Arthur is 
returning, but only as a memory. He must fix that fact 
upon his brain, — only as a memory. But the thought will 
not take root. He feels that, if Arthur were to step ashore 
alive, he should not be surprised : 

1 If one should bring me this report, 

That thou hadst touch'd the land to-day, 
And I went down unto the quay, 
And found thee lying in the port ; 

And if along with these should come 

The man I held as half-divine ; 

Should strike a sudden hand in mine, 
And ask a thousand things of home ; 

I should not feel it to be strange. ' 

Suddenly a storm rises \ and he begins to wonder whether 

his sorrow is like the sea in a tempest, — taking different 

aspects, now calm, now wild : changed upon the surface, 

but the same in its silent depth. As the storm passes, he 

sees the ship near the landing : it arrives with its precious 

freight, and the burial follows. Then he knows that Arthur 

is really gone from him for ever. As his grief breaks out 

afresh with the thought, friends press round him, reproving 

him i but he feels that they never knew his friend as he 

did. They cannot understand. He recalls the years of 

their friendship : he remembers, too, that there were sorrows 

to overcloud it : 

' If all was good and fair we met, 
This earth had been the Paradise 
It never look'd to human eyes 
Since our first Sun arose and set.' 

But with all its troubles, it was a life worth living : and for 
the sake of what has been, and for a proof of the strength 
of their love, he will find it worth living still. He has the 
memory to live with : 

1 'Tis better to have loved and lost 
Than never to have loved at all.' 

With this the first division of the poem ends : and the 
scene changes to a view of the life which he has determined 
to live out alone. It is Christmas Eve, the year of Hallam's 



FROM THE PRINCESS TO IN MEMORIAM 99 

death ; and the family are at Somersby. They feel the pain 
of keeping Christmas without Arthur — a Christmas 

6 Which brings no more a welcome guest 
To enrich the threshold of the night 
With shower'd largess of delight 
In dance and song and game and jest.' 

And the poet wonders what his friend is doing now, and 
chafes to think how little his sympathy can picture the life 
beyond the grave. Lazarus returned from death ; but 
there is no record of the four days spent in the unseen 
world. ' How is it, then ? Is there a life beyond ? ' Even 
if there is not, we have Love with us now. Let us at least 
cherish that. 

Then the Muse of Heaven speaks to him ' with darken'd 
brow/ upbraiding him for prating of things he cannot 
understand; and the poet's Muse pleads with her for 
pardon, if she has ventured too far upon holy ground. 

Then the New Year breaks, full of weariness. He recurs 
again to the image of the Yew : as its Spring is but one 
touch of colour 'at the tips/ so his life sinks back into 
gloom. And perhaps, he reflects, while his life is sinking 
back, Arthur's is advancing : so that if they were to meet, 
he would find something strange in his friend. But he 
banishes the thought : 

4 1 vex my heart with fancies dim : 
He still outstript me in the race ; 
It was but unity of place 
That made me dream I rank'd with him.' 

So, when they meet again, the old love, he assures himself, 
will return. They will have remembered all the while. 
And yet — 

' How fares it with the happy dead ? ' 

Do they forget old associations and old loves ? It may be 
so for a time ; but, when the veil is swept away, they will 
remember again : 

1 There no shade can last 
In that deep dawn behind the tomb, 
But clear from marge to marge shall bloom 
The eternal landscape of the past.' 

L.0FC. 



ioo ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON 

This, at least, one must hold, whatever school of thought, 
whatever creed, one follows • for all creeds and schools are 
only shadows of the Truth. And so the poet cries to his 
friend to be near him, as he passes through these shadows 
of doubt and argument, pointing him always to the light of 
eternity. 

But yet he hesitates : 

' Do we indeed desire the dead 

Should still be near us at our side ? 
Is there no baseness we would hide? 
No inner vileness that we dread?' 

If he were to meet Arthur, would not his friend find things 
in him that distressed him ? We cannot tell : we can only 
hope and stretch out ' lame hands of faith.' Meanwhile, 
all nature seems to waste itself: the riddle of the struggle 
for existence is beyond man's understanding. 

And here the second division ends on a note of doubt 
and extreme discomfort. 

From this point he strives to teach his trial patience. 
Sorrow shall be to him a wedded wife, to be loved calmly 
and evenly, not with the feverish passion of a lover for his 
mistress. 

And yet Arthur, now tutored to the lore of eternal life, 
must think his friend but a low and puny thing, as he cries 
after him in the silence. If that be so, let Arthur forget 
him : 

1 Then be my love an idle tale, 
And fading legend of the past.' 

And again he wonders : 

' Does my old friend remember me ? ' 

It cannot be otherwise, he reflects. Love cannot forget. 
The certainty of this remembrance comforts him ; and .in 
the night he pictures the tablet to Arthur in Clevedon 
Church, with the moonlight upon it, and so falls asleep to 
dream of his friend. When he wakes, it is the anniversary 
of Hallam's death, and the morning is wild with a storm. 
The memory of his loss floods in upon him anew, but with 
a comforting reflection. There are ' so many worlds, so 
much to do,' that perhaps Arthur was needed elsewhere to 



FROM THE PRINCESS TO IN ME MORI AM 101 

fulfil God's order. It might well be so, he thinks, for Arthur 
was worthy of the call. 

With this thought the third division of the poem closes. 



THE HALLA.M MEMORIAL TABLET. 



The fourth part opens with another Christmas Eve, and 
this time the gathering is less gloomy : 

' As in the winters left behind 

Again our ancient games had place, 
The mimic picture's breathing grace, 
And dance and son£ and hoodman-blind.' 

And the poet, looking on the glad scene, asks whether the 
regret for Arthur's death has died out, and answers that it 



102 ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON 

is not dead, since he is always remembering him. He 
reflects that a longer life was needed to such a love : 

' More years had made me love thee more. ' 

And then, with an invocation to the New Year, the poet 
pictures what the new years would have brought had 
Arthur lived. His fancy conjures up the possible events of 
such a time, until he suddenly recalls the fact of his loss. 
Then, leaving such vain dreams, he goes back into the past, 
recalls the life at Cambridge and at Somersby : and, re- 
membering everything, assures himself that Arthur would 
be welcome could he return. But he never can return : 
the poet will never see him again. It needs a strength 
and purity beyond man's power to live once more with the 
dead : 

1 How pure at heart and sound in head, 
With what divine affections bold, 
Should be the man whose thought would hold 
An hour's communion with the dead.' 

They can never meet except in memory : and so his mind 
travels back to Somersby again, and thence to Vienna, 
where Arthur died. Every corner in the house reminds 
him of his friend, but even the house must be left. The 
day has come for giving up Somersby : 

* We leave the well-beloved place 

Where first we gazed upon the sky.' 

But before he goes, he walks in the garden with two spirits, 
who speak with him. One represents the early boyish 
love of home : the other, the later love of home illumined 
by his love for Arthur (this definition of the spirits is the 
poet's own). Then he goes away : and in a strange place 
he hears the Christmas bells, and with the old year leaves 
the old life behind. The bells that ring in the new year, 
ring in faith and hope and consolation : 

1 Ring in the valiant man and free, 

The larger heart, the kindlier hand ; 
Ring out the darkness of the land, 
Ring in the Christ that is to be.' 

The fifth and last part begins with Arthur's birthday, an 
anniversary which recalls to him the character and life of 



FROM THE PRINCESS TO IN MEMORIAM 103 

his friend, at home and at Cambridge. And, as he thinks 
of his friend's virtues, the Spring breaks, and the season 
reminds him of the new birth and growth of these virtues 
in the new life beyond. And so, with resignation at his 
heart, he returns to the house where his friend had lived, 
and the view is no longer gloomy. 

' I hear a chirp of birds ; I see 

Betwixt the black fronts long withdrawn 
A light -blue lane of early dawn, 
And think of early days and thee, 

And bless thee.' 

The doubt is over, and his soul is at ease. 

' Not in vain, 
Like Paul with beasts, I fought with Death.' 

And in his final resignation he knows that, though he die 
himself, he will not lose his friend \ that their love is 
eternal, through the eternity of 

' Faith that comes of self-control, 

The truths that never can be proved 
Until we close with all we loved, 
And all we flow from, soul in soul.' 



Such is a naked outline of the poem, which may, perhaps, 
serve to show the general line of the thought, and the 
gradual struggle of doubt and faith. It takes no account 
of the prefatory poem and the epilogue, since they stand 
outside the scheme of the work. The first is a confession 
of faith, excusing the doubt : the second is a marriage ode 
written for the wedding of his sister Cecilia to Edmund 
Law Lushington. It has but little connection with 'In 
Memoriam.' 

The main work is rich in beauties. A more logical and 
sustained effort of mental analysis has seldom enriched 
poetry • the complete progress of sorrow into consolation is 
followed with a faithfulness which is actually merciless. 
The poet spares to show no phase of his passion : every 
new sensation is exposed, questioned, and criticised. And 
the analysis is conveyed through the medium of a metre 
exactly adapted to the subject : a metre, the even cadence 



104 ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON 

of whose course rises and falls like the sighing of a 
melancholy wind among the branches. The language is 
polished and chaste : the expression, even in the most 
passionate utterances, is refined and subdued. The result 
is a poem of unusual beauty, of a sustained literary ex- 
cellence of the first class, which fails on but one note — the 
note of emotion. 

No poem of Tennyson's is so apt for quotation, none is 
so rich in phrases that have long since become household 
words. But it will probably be always read and re- 
membered for special passages rather than for the strength 
and unity of its argument. It is natural it should be so : 
for ' In Memoriam ' is much too long for its subject. The 
thought that animates it, while it progresses and develops 
systematically, is diffused and weakened by repetition, and 
the struggle between doubt and faith is extended over too 
large an area. The poem suffers also from another mis- 
fortune, which is common to all work of this kind : there is 
everywhere a suggestion of artificiality. The failing was 
inevitable. When sorrow tries to fix its record upon paper 
it becomes analytic, introspective ; it begins to criticise 
itself, and so ceases to be sorrow. There are emotions 
which literature cannot stereotype : directly the attempt is 
made, the emotion passes into self-analysis. This is a 
misfortune which ' In Memoriam ' must share even with 
' Lycidas ' and ' Adonais ' : pure emotion of the strongest 
and most human elements can never be recorded. It 
spends itself in the abandonment to the passion of the 
moment : when it begins to record its sensation, it has lost 
the keenness and sting of its agony. It becomes, then, 
the luxury of a mind living in the past : it has ceased to 
live in the present. And being reflective and analytic, it is 
the result of an effort, the exercise of an energy : in other 
words, an artificial product. The more beautiful its finish, 
the more obvious its artificiality : and every step it takes 
towards Art is a step further from Nature. The more w r e 
borrow from the brain the less we owe to the heart. 



CHAPTER VII 

MAUD 

His elevation to the Laureateship gave a natural impetus to 
the sale of Tennyson's work, and in 185 1 no less than three 
new issues appeared. The Poems ran into a seventh edition, 
which was enriched by four new pieces, — ' To the Queen,' 
* Edwin Morris/ 'The Eagle,' and the lines 'Come not 
when I am dead.' A fourth edition of * The Princess ' was 
also needed, and in this issue the incident of the Prince's 
' weird seizures ' made its first appearance : there were also 
alterations in the first and fourth songs. ' In Memoriam,' 
too, was printed in a fourth edition of five thousand copies 
(three editions having been exhausted within the first year), 
and the section 'O sorrow, wilt thou live with me' (lix.), was 
added for the first time. During the same year Tennyson 
published the stanzas, ' What time I wasted youthful hours,' 
in Miss Power's Keepsake, in which annual the lines ' Come 
not when I am dead ' were also included. 

The first of these is eminently above the level of Keepsake 
verse, and invites quotation : 

1 What time I wasted youthful hours, 
One of the shining winged powers 
Show'd me vast cliffs, with crowns of towers.' 

This is like an echo from ' Timbuctoo ' ; but the spiritual 
city which now burst into view was fairer than the hidden 
region of Africa. It was a city peopled by the spirits 
of just men made perfect, whose gates are open to the 
fearless : 

( He said, " The labour is not small : 
Yet winds the pathway free to all : — 
Take care thou dost not fear to fall. " 

This poem, it is to be hoped, will eventually be reprinted 
with the rest of Tennyson's work. 

105 



106 ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON 

His one other literary performance this year was dedi- 
cated to a grateful occasion. In February a farewell 
banquet was given to W. C. Macready, the famous actor, 
and at this dinner John Forster recited Tennyson's sonnet 
to the guest of the evening. The lines were printed in The 
Household Narrative of Current Events, in The Peoples 
Journal, and in most of the current newspapers. They 
have since been included in his collected works. 

But the year which brought so many gains brought its 
loss as well. ' Tennyson and his wife, 5 Carlyle wrote to 
Emerson, 'are in Italy. Their baby died/ It was this 
journey that Tennyson recounted so tenderly in ' The 
Daisy.' But before that was written, the loss had been 
repaired by their son Hallam's birth : 

' So dear a life your arms enfold, 
Whose crying is a cry for gold. ' 

While abroad they visited Cogoletto, Florence, Reggio, 
Parma, Milan, and Como. The Brownings caught a glimpse 
of them at the Louvre, but only from a distance. This was 
in the autumn, and by Christmas the poet and his wife had 
returned to London, where FitzGerald found him looking 
' pretty well.' The journey to Italy is connected with one 
amusing incident. Lord John Russell gave a large recep- 
tion, to which the Tennysons were invited ; and during the 
evening the Prime Minister, moving from guest to guest, 
encountered the Laureate. They immediately broke into 
conversation, Lord John asking Tennyson how he had 
enjoyed his visit to Venice. As the poet did not appear 
communicative, his host pressed him further, when he con- 
fessed that he had not liked Venice. 

' And why not, pray, Mr. Tennyson ? ' 

' I couldn't get any English tobacco there for love or 
money,' replied the poet. 

The Tennysons were now at Twickenham, rapidly making 
new friends. Sir Henry Taylor, who was quartered at 
Mortlake, was particularly pleased with his neighbour, whom 
he regarded as 'a singular compound of manliness and 
helplessness, manly in his simplicity/ He admired the 
work no less than the man : * I should think he is the 




HON. HALLAM AND LIONEL TENNYSON. 
After the picture by G. F. Watts, R.A. 



108 ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON 

only really popular poet since Byron, except Wordsworth, 
for some ten years of his life.' But Henry Taylor seems to 
have shared the view of Home, that Tennyson's future 
w r ork was unlikely to prove much stronger than his actual 
achievement. ' I do not anticipate,' he wrote to Sir 
Edmund Head, ' that he will take any such place in poetry 
as is filled by Coleridge or Wordsw r orth ; but I think that 
his poetry will be felt to be admirable in its kind.' 

In 1852 the poet's attention was chiefly confined to 
national and political subjects, the four poems which he 
printed being all of a public character. The Examiner for 
January 31st contained 'Britons, guard your own,' and in 
the next month he published 'The Third of February 1852,' 
— an outcome of Louis Napoleon's move towards an ab- 
solute government, — and ' Hands all Round,' w r hich ap- 
peared together on February 7th. All these poems were 
printed anonymously, over the signature ' Merlin ' ; and 
have since been acknowledged his. On the fourteenth of 
February, however, over the signature ' Taliessin ' there was 
presented a copy of verses opening, 

'How much I love this writer's manly style,' 

the authorship of which has not been generally known. 
FitzGerald's papers contained them in Tennyson's ms., 
together with another poem, c Where is he, the simple Fool/ 
which was printed in a newspaper at the time, but never 
included in Tennyson's collected works. 

During the early spring he was at Malvern with his wife, 
in daily communication with the Carlyles and Sydney 
Dobell (the founder of the Spasmodic School of Poetry, 
and author of 'The Roman,' and ' Balder' ), who spent the 
greater part of his life in business in Gloucestershire. In 
August, Hallam Tennyson was born ; and on September 
29 we find Frederick Denison Maurice writing to Charles 
Kingsley : 

1 1 hope to be in London on Tuesday : Alfred Tennyson has done 
me the high honour of asking me to be the godfather to his child, who 
is to be baptized on that day. I accept the office with thankfulness 
and fear.' 

The offer was made with gratitude and esteem. Tenny- 



MAUD 109 

son wished his son to be able to say, in the years to come, 
' My father asked Mr. Maurice to be my godfather, because 
he was the truest Christian he knew in the world.' 
Thackeray was also present at the christening. 

The closing months of 1852 are rendered memorable to 
students of Tennyson by the death of the Duke of Welling- 
ton and the publication of the Laureate's Ode. The first 
draft, which was probably thrown off in necessary haste, 
appeared as a sixteen-page pamphlet bearing the imprint of 
Edward Moxon. The Press w r as very ill contented with 
the Ode ; and, when a second edition appeared in the next 
year, it had been considerably emended. The main altera- 
tions, which distinguish the poem in its present stage from 
the first edition, are the addition of a few lines to stanzas 1. 
and 11., and of the passages about Lisbon in the sixth 
stanza. The seventh has been considerably corrected and 
amplified, the additions including the whole passage from 

' On God and Godlike men we build our trust ' 
to 

' Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.' 

The Forster Library contains a copy of the first edition 
with the corrections made in the second, written in in 
Forster's own handwriting. The Ode occasioned a pleasant 
interchange of courtesies between Sir Henry Taylor and 
the poet. ' I have read your Ode,' wrote the former, 'and 
I feel that many thousands in future times will feel about it 
as I do, or with a yet stronger and deeper feeling. ... It 
has a greatness worthy of its theme, and an absolute sim- 
plicity and truth, with all the poetic passion of your nature 
moving beneath.' To which Tennyson replied in his 
downright, genuine strain : 

' Thanks ! Thanks ! In the all but universal deprecia- 
tion of my Ode by the Press, the prompt and hearty 
approval of it by a man as true as the Duke himself is 
doubly grateful.' 

One hesitates, however, to share Henry Taylor's honest 
enthusiasm. The Ode has a grand, solemn movement, 
advancing, as it were, to the tolling of the funeral bell, and 
sweeping on to the swell of the organ. But it is ornate 



no ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON 

rather than inspired, with more study than sincerity to 
commend it. The lines in it which are deathless, lines 
such as 

* Not once or twice in our rough island-story 
The path of duty was the way to glory,' 

or 

* This is England's greatest son, 
He that gained a hundred fights, 
Nor ever lost an English gun, ? 

are overweighted by the mass of rhetoric which encumbers 
them. There is everywhere too much decoration, too little 
simplicity. In his public odes Tennyson is never easy ; 
he always appears to pose, to assume a sentiment foreign 
to him, and to feel himself that it is alien. The most en- 
during poetry is never written to order. 

The next year, the last at Twickenham, saw an eighth 
edition of the Poems with but a few new pieces added. 
The ' Lines' to 'E. L.' (Edward Lear), referring to that 
author's Journals of Tours in Central and South Ltaly and 
Albania, were new, the poem ' To the Queen ' had been 
emended, and ' A Dream of Fair Women ' had now re- 
ceived the poet's finishing touches. This poem was, per- 
haps, as much touched and retouched as any Tennyson 
ever wrote, and the corrections are almost without excep- 
tion improvements. The ' Dream,' in its original shape, 
has a few crudities and unpolished corners which are 
strangely foreign to Tennyson's genius : in its finished 
form it is so delicately elaborated as to be in parts even 
obtrusively artificial. But the over-elaboration is atoned 
for by the proportion and concentration of the whole. 

Meanwhile the making of new friends did not imply for- 
getfulness of the old. FitzGerald was with the Tennysons 
during their last days at Twickenham : and in the quiet of 
their later home in the Isle of Wight, whither they moved 
in 1853, they were mindful of old acquaintances for whom 
life was more eventful. Frederick Denison Maurice, having 
been expelled from King's College, offered during the first 
weeks of 1854 to resign his position as Chaplain of 
Lincoln's Inn, — a delicate step which the Benchers begged 
him to reconsider. And among the many letters of sympathy 



MAUD 



in 



which he received none was more tender and genial than 
the Laureate's, in which he pressed him to forget his 
trouble for the moment in a visit to his old friends and his 




FARRINGFORD. 



new godson. Whewell considered the poem the most 
perfect of its kind which he had ever encountered. 

1 Should all our churchmen foam in spite 
At you, so careful of the right, 

Yet one lay-hearth would give you welcome 
(Take it and come) to the Isle of Wight ; 

Come, Maurice, come : the lawn as yet 
Is hoar with rime, or spongy-wet ; 

But when the wreath of March has blossom'd, 
Crocus, anemone, violet, 

Or later, pay one visit here, 

For those are few we hold as dear ; 

Nor pay but one, but come for many, 
Many and many a happy year. ' 



ii2 A LFRED, LORD TENN YSON 

It was the same dislike of disagreement in tenet and 
doctrine that moved Tennyson to write a warm letter of 
welcome to Bishop Colenso, at the time when the narrower 
minds among the clergy were fuming against him, — a letter 
in which he begged the Bishop to come and stay with him 
as long as he liked. The poet's faith was strong enough 
and high enough to despise controversy over detail, and 
difference in degree. The breadth of his intellect admitted 
a breadth of sympathy. Once, in a letter to Mr. Bosworth 
Smith, written on December 12, 1885, he expressed a 
vigorous disapproval of Disestablishment. ' I believe,' he 
said, ' that the disestablishment and disendowment of the 
Church would prelude the downfall of much that is greatest 
and best in England.' But he had always some sympathy 
for minds at variance with his own. ' I am no Chartist,' 
he wrote to Mr. Ernest Jones, ' but I heartily sympathise 
with your sufferings in a cause which you have deemed 
good, notwithstanding.' 

For politics Tennyson had little inclination. When, in 
1880, he was offered the Lord Rectorship of Glasgow 
University, he declined the honour on learning that he was 
put forward as the candidate of the Conservative party. 
He was unwilling, he said, to stand as the representative of 
any single school of politics. Everything human was 
congenial to him : he had no heart for dissension. Indeed, 
with his disposition to retirement, Tennyson combined a 
most sympathetic faculty of passing out of himself into the 
interests and achievements of others. The affections of his 
own home-life never actually estranged him, as FitzGerald 
hinted, from the consideration of his friends : the concentra- 
tion upon his own work never blinded him to merit in 
another's. On the contrary, his appreciation of the literary 
work of his time was so keen as sometimes to overleap his 
critical judgment. During 1853 the world of letters was 
stirred by the performances of a poet, now little remembered, 
named Alexander Smith, a pattern-designer in a Glasgow 
factory, who published several volumes of poetry w T hich 
had an unusually popular vogue. Imitating, perhaps un- 
consciously, Keats and Tennyson himself, he achieved a 
conspicuous facility for melodious and graceful verse, so 



MAUD 113 

fluent and self-contained that it is only on a careful exam- 
ination that the reader discovers, despite occasional bril- 
liance, the want of real power and individuality which 
deprives the work of permanent value. The music and 
grace of Smith's verse took London by storm. Charles 
Kingsley, even, was so blinded by the brilliance of his 
coming, as to write a paper in Frasers Magazine^ in which, 
while he pleaded for a less critical enthusiasm for a writer 
who was not without limitation, he still granted that Smith 
was a greater poet than Keats. And in 1853, when 'A 
Life Drama,' Smith's principal poem, appeared, Tennyson 
in his turn wrote to the author, expressing his enjoyment 
and admiration of the work. There was a pathetic melody 
in his verse ; and, in certain poems, such as his ' Glasgow,' 
a sincerity that naturally appealed to sympathy. But his 
best work was done in prose; and in the pages of the 
Athencznm a very careful student of poetry, afterwards 
known to be William Allingham, attacked the poet with the 
charge of plagiarism. The sequel was an oblivion which 
was, it may be, an excess in reaction. For with his melody, 
his colour, and his borrowed distinction, Alexander Smith 
had perhaps greater claims to attention than some popular 
poets of our own more critical generation. 

Another contemporary poet of whom Tennyson expressed 
approval was Thomas Lovell Beddoes. During the 
Laureate's honeymoon, when he was staying in the Lake- 
country, Miss Zoe King lent him a copy of the posthumous 
Deailis Jest-Book) and wrote in high delight, when Tenny- 
son returned the volume ' with a few lines in which he rated 
the work highly.' He had even higher praise for Fitz- 
Gerald's ' Euphranor,' a Platonic dialogue dealing with 
Cambridge life, which was published in 1851. The con- 
cluding passage, which describes a night of the May races, 
was declared by Tennyson to be the finest piece of modern 
prose he had ever read. After a stirring scene recounting 
the boat-race, which is scarcely more vivid, however, than a 
similar description in 'Tom Brown at Oxford,' the book 
closes with these words : 

' We walked home across the meadows that lie between 
the river and the town, whither the dusky troops of gowns- 

H 



ii4 ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON 

men were evaporating, while twilight gathered over all, and 
the nightingale began to be heard among the flowering 
chestnuts of Jesus. ' 

It is pictorial prose enough : but in no way singular. 
The sentiment and the association of the scene, no doubt, 
endeared the passage to Tennyson, who, in his impulsive, 
generous fashion, said rather more in its praise than he 
wished even his friends to understand. Enthusiasm and 
the patriotic spirit of University life cannot be taken too 
seriously. 

At the end of 1853 the Tennysons left Twickenham for 
the Isle of Wight ; and in the following year was born 
Lionel, their second son, who afterwards married a daughter 
of Mr. Frederick Locker-Lampson (subsequently Mrs. 
Augustine Birrell). The same year found another Tenny- 
son among the poets, Frederick, Alfred's elder brother, 
publishing in 1854 his first volume of verse, Days and 
Hours. 

The move to a pleasanter climate and more comfortable 
quarters seems to have impressed Tennyson's friends with 
an appreciation of his worldly comforts. ' Our poets,' wrote 
Procter to J. T. Fields, ' are all going to the poorhouse — 
except Tennyson.' And while the Tennysons were moving 
southward to their secluded island-home, the poet's memory 
was receiving a strange tribute in the north. The Arctic 
explorers, sighting at sea a tapering pillar standing with its 
natural pedestal to a height of over seven hundred feet, put 
in to shore to take note of it, and Dr. Kane, one of their 
number, suggested that they should christen it ' Tennyson's 
Pillar.' And so it has been named ever since. The 
doctor's impression of the scene may be given in his own 
words : 

1 1 was still more struck with another (rock) of the same sort, in the 
immediate neighbourhood of my halting-ground beyond Sunny Gorge, 
to the north of latitude 79 . A single cliff of greenstone, marked by 
the slaty limestone that once encased it, rears itself from a crumbled 
base of sandstones, like the boldly-chiselled rampart of an ancient city. 
At its northern extremity, on the brink of a deep ravine which has 
worn its way among the ruins, there stands a solitary column or 
minaret-tower, as sharply finished as if it had been cast for the Place 
Vendome. Yet the length of the shaft alone is four hundred and 



MAUD 115 

eighty feet ; and it rises on a plinth or pedestal itself two hundred and 
eighty feet high. I remember well the emotions of my party as it first 
broke upon our view. Cold and sick as I was, I brought back a 
sketch of it, which may have interest for the reader, though it scarcely 
suggests the imposing dignity of this magnificent landmark. Those 
who are happily familiar with the writings of Tennyson, and have 
communed with his spirit in the solitudes of a wilderness, will 
apprehend the impulse that inscribed the scene with his name.' 

Army and Navy were to remember the Laureate, and the 
name that was not forgotten among the ice-floes was to 
inspire the hard-pressed forces in the trenches of the 
Crimea. It was during 1854 that 'The Charge of the 
Light Brigade' appeared in The Examiner for Saturday, 
December the 9th : and in the following August a thousand 
copies of it were printed on a quarto sheet to be distributed 
among the troops before Sebastopol. The poem has become 
almost too popular for discussion ; it is the one stirring, 
galloping piece of energy which all shades of mind and 
sympathy seem to admire alike. There is a sound of horses' 
hoofs and a clatter of accoutrements in the melody that 
brings its own reply to the critics who find Tennyson a 
dilettante and a dreamer alone. 

The present year (1855) has, how r ever, more important 
claims to our attention than the song of the battle-field, in 
that it saw the publication of 'Maud,' the greater part of 
which w T as written in Sir John Simeon's garden at Swainston. 
The poet used to sit at w r ork under the shade of a spreading 
cedar on the lawn, and the view which peeped through its 
branches doubtless suggested many of the touches in the 
garden scene of ' Maud.' 

The history of ' Maud ' is singular. No poem of 
Tennyson's evoked more heated discussion at its first ap- 
pearance \ none has lived down depreciation with such full 
effect and dignity. 

The volume which took its name from the principal 
poem, contained also The Brook, The Letters, The Ode o?i 
the Death of the Duke of Wellington, The Daisy, Lines to 
F. D. Maurice, Will, and The Charge of the Light 
Brigade. 

Several of the shorter poems in the volume have already- 
been discussed \ among the others the most noteworthy are 



n6 ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON 

'The Brook' and 'The Daisy.' 'The Letters' is a very 
simple little story, told in polished, but not very animated 
verse. ' Will ' is a trifle didactic, and at the same time in- 
complete. But ' The Brook ' may rank with ' Dora ' and 
' The Gardener's Daughter ' as a fresh, scented idyll of the 
country-side, through which sings and quivers the voice of 
the stream as it babbles over its stones. The trembling 
music of its flow is echoed to perfection in the melody of 
the verse : nothing more delicately natural is to be found in 
poetry. ' The Daisy,' already referred to in another con- 
text, is a tender dream of the poet, musing in a murky 
street in Edinburgh over a daisy picked on the 'snowy 
Splugen,' and gives him opportunity for many varied sketches 
of Southern life, full of colour and spirit and movement. 
It is a little picture-gallery of foreign views. 

But it was ' Maud ' that gave the character to the volume. 
The poem grew, as every one knows, out of Sir John 
Simeon's remark that the lines ' O that 'twere possible ' re- 
quired some concomitant interest to explain their force. 
The verses, long set aside in the miscellany where they first 
ff>- *7- - " appeared, were read to Sir John Simeon by the author 
during the early days of their friendship, after the Tenny- 
sons' removal to Farringford. Doubtless his friend begged 
of the poet the recital of some of his less-remembered 
verses, and was struck at once by the pity of their oblivion. 
At any rate, on his suggestion Tennyson founded ' Maud,' 
and its appearance was followed by a storm of controversy. 
Blackwood's Magazine and The National Review both 
noticed the poem unfavourably, and The Edinburgh Review 
published a long rigmarole of dissatisfaction. The writer 
of the last article compared ' Maud ' to ' St. Simeon Stylites,' 
considering that both have the serious defect of leaving the 
reader in a painful state of confusion as to the limits of the 
sane and the insane ; complaining, too, of a want of distinct 
conception in the whole work. The critique is an instruc- 
tive one, because a careful study of it reveals the fact that 
the writer was conscious of something wanting in ' Maud/ 
but was unable to define the need. He seems all through 
his review to be half an admirer in spite of himself, to be 
staggered by the lawlessness of the metre and the audacity 




V^sw^vkOc^ 



THE CEDAR UNDER WHICH ! MAUD ' WAS WRITTEN, 



n8 ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON 

of the subject. The truth was that 'the public wanted 
other notes ' from Tennyson. People could not understand 
this outburst of passion, this strange melancholy and 
morbidity : above all, they failed to grasp the dramatic 
character of the poem. Sentiments which the poet had put 
into the mouth of his principal actor were interpreted as 
his own ; and the final passages of the work, especially — 
those, namely, referring to the Crimean War — caused the 
gravest offence to the less intelligent section of his readers. 
An anonymous poet ('A Poet of the People' he dubbed 
himself) published through an obscure house in Holies 
Street, Cavendish Square, a vulgar little travesty entitled 
' Anti-Maud,' which destroyed by the grossness of its taste 
a certain merit which it manifested in its assumption of the 
Laureate's style. In this strain he assailed the concluding 
passages : 

* Who is it clamours for War ? Is it one who is ready to fight ? 

Is it one who will grasp the sword, and rush on the foe with a shout ? 

Far from it : — 'tis one of the musing mind who merely intends to write — 

He sits at home by his own snug hearth, and hears the storm howl 

without.' 

Nor was this the only enemy in the gate. A volume called 
Modern Manicheism, Labour's Utopia, and other Poems, con- 
tained a set of verses, ' Vindiciae Paris,' addressed to 
Tennyson with a like expostulation : 

* What though you are jesting — shall this your childish perverseness 

excuse ? 
Rather all the more insult it is for your vexed and recalcitrant muse, 
And she all the less calmly endures that you bid her your ravings 

dispense, 
That simply because they are yours, there are blockheads who take 

them for sense.' 

The author of this book, who voluminously described him- 
self on the title-page as — 

' A Poet hidden 
In the light of thought, 
Singing hymns unbidden, 
Till the world is wrought 
To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not,' 

is generally supposed to have been Mr. W. T. Thornton, of 
the India Office, who was born about 1830, and wrote a 



MAUD 119 

number of books, both poetical and political, including a 
translation of the Odes of Horace. 

And then a champion spoke for the poet ; a Dr. Mann 
wrote a ' Tennyson's "Maud" Vindicated/ — a thin shilling 
pamphlet in a brown paper cover, which was good enough 
to win a sympathetic word of approval from the Laureate 
himself. ' Your commentary/ he said, ' is as true as it is full.' 
Sydney Dobell, too, was anxious to plead for the excellence 
of the poem, and papers were found at his death containing 
notes for a reply to the unfriendly criticisms which ' Maud ' 
had encountered. And yet another voice was raised on 
Tennyson's behalf in the little volume of poems lonica, 
published some three years after ' Maud.' Among the 
treasures of this unpretentious casket was a copy of verses 
written e after reading "Maud,"' which reasons with Tenny- 
son's critics in a tone of calm contempt : 

* Leave him to us, ye good and sage, 
Who stiffen in your middle age. 
Ye loved him once, but now forbear ; 
Yield him to those who hope and dare, 
And have not yet to forms consign 'd 
A rigid, ossifying mind.' 

Still, it is not surprising that i Maud ' should have puzzled 
its commentators at first, for both subject and treatment 
were bold and unconventional ; and it is apt to be the 
ordinary only that meets with immediate recognition. 
1 Maud ' was anything rather than ordinary. Tennyson 
had dared to choose for himself a new type of hero, and 
one that alarmed the public taste. The central character 
of the poem, the speaker, seemed at first to repel sympathy. 
He is a young man of a morbid temperament, early 
estranged from the careless banquet of life by the sad 
death, or suicide, of his father; and gradually separating 
himself from the thought and tenor of his surroundings. 
The age of peace into which he is born seems to him an 
age of falsehood, everything in his world is out of joint : 

' Peace sitting under her olive, and slurring the days gone by, 
When the poor are hovelled and hustled together, each sex, like swine, 

When only the ledger lives, and when only not all men lie ; 
Peace in her vineyard — yes — but a company forges the wine. ' 



120 ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON 

He is sick of the Hall and the Hill, when suddenly the 
family from the big house return, and with them Maud, 
the daughter of the home. He falls in love with her from 
the first ; we know that from the moment he begins to 
protest. Love's first emotion is always an attempt at self- 
deceit. 

* Faultily faultless, icily regular, splendidly null,' 

he finds her ; but when he takes care to insist on the whole- 
ness of his heart, we can see the hidden wound. And so 
when he meets her, he bows, and thinks her proud. He 
is already troubled at her want of notice for him. He is 
poor, he knows it, and she is rich; and he consoles his 
need of her with a smug reflection : 

1 Maud, you milkvvhite fawn, you are all unmeet for a wife, 

You have but fed on the roses and lain in the lilies of life.' 

But he hangs about the hall, nevertheless, and when he 
hears her sing, he is aflame. Her exquisite face and wild 
voice claim him altogether; he can keep his secret from 
himself no longer. He meets her, and she makes him 

' Divine amends 
For a courtesy not return'd.' 

Now he is given over to his passion ; but he cherishes it 
chiefly for its delicious melancholy. It is a comfort to him 
to nurse his solitude and be sorry for his weakness : 

' Ah ! What shall I be at fifty, 
Should Nature keep me alive, 
If I find the world so bitter 
When I am but twenty- five ? ' 

And yet, if she could love him, he thinks, her smile might 
make the bitter sweet. This is the very ecstasy of love : 
an unhealthy, effeminate passion, rejoicing in the analysis 
of its morbidity. It only needs jealousy to complete its 
misery ; and jealousy comes to its aid. He sees her with 
another — 

' A lord, a captain, a padded shape, 
A bought commission, a waxen face, 
A rabbit mouth that is ever agape.' 



MAUD 121 

And the pain gathers at his heart. But in his most con- 
temptible moment he feels that he is to be despised. 

1 Ah for a man to arise in me,' 
he cries, 

' That the man I am may cease to be ! ' 

Suddenly his jealousy seems ungrounded. He meets her : 
he kisses her hand : he is happy for one moment. The next 
he is despondent \ her brother has scorned him, cut him 

1 With a stony British stare,' 

and the sensitive temperament glows with indignation. 
There follows a reaction, for he tells her of his love. She 
encourages him, and his world is May. 

1 Go not, happy day, 

From the shining fields, 
Go not, happy day, 

Till the maiden yields. 
Rosy is the West, 

Rosy is the South, 
Roses are her lips, 

And a rose her mouth.' 

Then, like a blight on their love, the brother returns to the 
hall and finds Maud and her lover in the garden. There 
is a heated discussion, and the brother strikes him before 
the other man, the lord of whose suit he was afraid. A duel 
follows, and the brother falls with the generous cry, ' The 
fault was mine.' The lover rushes to the Breton coast to 
feed his sorrow with memory. Remembrance eats into 
his brain ; and that way madness lies. In impotent frenzy 
he cries out to the world around him ; everything human 
is hateful to him. But with the end the morbid spirit 
passes. He becomes manlike again. Like the hero of 
1 Locksley Hall ' he turns once more to the life of action, 
to the interests of his country, the glory of prowess, and 

' The blood-red blossom of war with a heart of fire.' 

The weird storm and stress of the ravings are dramatic 
beyond anything that Tennyson has clothed in more 
dramatic form. It is strange that a writer, who could 
throw himself so prodigally into the unrestrained emotion 



122 ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON 

of his character, should not have succeeded more fully in 
his attempts towards stage-drama. The ghastly horror of 
the lines that follow can scarcely be matched : 

' O me, why have they not buried me deep enough ? 
Is it kind to have made me a grave so rough, 
Me, that never was a quiet sleeper ? 
Maybe still I am but half dead ; 
Then I cannot be wholly dumb ; 
I will cry to the steps above my head, 
And somebody, surely, some kind heart will come 
To bury me, bury me 
Deeper, ever so little deeper.' 

They are only the Philistine and the dilettante who com- 
plain that such a subject is unfit for art. Art claims for 
her own every subject that she can illumine : the work 
only fails in art when it is content with a sordid photo- 
graphy, or a smug, puritanical concealment that only serves 
to express what it would hide. It is here that realism fails, 
on the one side ; and on the other, the pseudo-idealism, 
which is nothing but a slavery to the conventional. No 
phase of life is denied to art, if she bestows upon it her 
perfect work ; and the hand that would tear ' Maud ' from 
literature can scarcely avoid the emasculation of ' King 
Lear.' 

Another school of criticism, busying itself with * Maud,' 
has taken the poem to task for its unevenness and its want 
of scheme ; but blame like this is grievously blind in its 
effort to be critical. For the unevenness and the want of 
scheme in ' Maud ' are the very elements which constitute 
its dramatic quality; the poem is uneven and restless 
because the mind it portrays is restless. The sudden, 
unexplained transitions from sentiment to sentiment form 
the exact analysis of the morbid, uneasy mind, groping after 
its own content. The critical foot-rule cannot measure 
1 Maud,' finding so many cubits to be added to its stature 
before it can attain artistic unity. For it does attain artistic 
unity in its fearless presentment of unrest, in its perfect 
appreciation of the life creeping on broken wing towards 
the cells of madness and fear. 

As an example of a very general estimate of ' Maud/ it 
is interesting to observe the attitude adopted by Mr. 



MAUD 123 

Edmund Clarence Stedman, in his appreciative review of 
Tennyson's work in Victorian Poets. He says : ' " Maud," 
with its strength and weakness, has divided public opinion 
more than any other of the author's works. I think that 
his judicious students will not demur to my opinion that it 
is quite below his other sustained productions ; rather, that 
it is not sustained at all,, but, while replete with beauties, 
weak and uneven as a whole, and that this is due to the 
poet's having gone outside his own nature, and to his 
surrender of the joy of art, in an effort to produce some- 
thing that should at once catch the favour of the multitude. 
"Maud" is scanty in theme, thin in treatment, poor in 
thought ; but has musical episodes, with much fine scenery 
and diction. It is a greater medley than " The Princess," 
shifting from vague speculations to passionate outbreaks, 
and glorying in one famous and beautiful nocturne, — but 
all intermixed with cheap satire, and conspicuous for 
affectations unworthy of the poet.' (M^ ^ <* hnr^ 

The whole criticism, to our view, seems based on a mis- 
conception of the character and aim of the poem. The 
unevenness is the result of the dramatic study of mental 
reaction, following the moods and caprices of the subject. 
The poet has, indeed, ' gone outside his own nature,' not 
in order to catch the favour of the multitude, but to adopt 
with a singular fidelity the instincts and emotion of a 
character altogether foreign to his own. To compare 
1 Maud ' with c The Princess ' is surely to miss the sense of 
proportion : the one is a simple fairy tale, the other a study 
in morbid passion. Mr. Stedman even seems to expect in 
such a study the classic regularity and unbroken outline of 
some calm elegy of resignation. Calmness, evenness, sus- 
tained effort are not the excellencies of * Maud ' ; but there 
are strength, intensity, and dramatic fervour to fill their 
place. And it is through these qualities that ' Maud ' 
triumphs. But it has other beauties, too. The study gives 
the artist his opportunity as well. He can play not only 
the analyst, but the musician. Nocturne and spring-song, 
dance and death-march follow one another in swift pro- 
cession. There is an alteration of key for every change of 
temperament. It is this harmony of matter and manner, 



124 ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON 

and this dramatic grasp on the subject that give * Maud ' its 
unique position among Tennyson's works ; for the poet 
here takes a subject altogether unsympathetic, and by the 
force of his art compels our sympathy. The hope and the 
doubt, the pang and the passion, become personal sensa- 
tions as we read ; we forget the unhealthy atmosphere in 
which the speaker moves, for we are moving with him, 
living his life out by his side. To compel the reader to 
this sympathy is to prove one's-self a dramatist, and to be 
truly dramatic is to be a true artist. 

So viewed, ' Maud ' remains one of the most vivid and 
artistic poems in the language. 

It was always a favourite with the author, who read it to 
Sir Frederick Pollock at Farringford, and to the Brownings 
at Dorset Street, during the year of its publication, and has 
since read many extracts from it on different occasions. 

The party at Dorset Street to whom Tennyson read 
'Maud' on the 27th of September 1855 was composed of 
Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and Dante Gabriel 
Rossetti. While Tennyson was reading, Rossetti made a 
pen-and-ink sketch of him, which he subsequently re-copied. 
The original fell into the hands of Robert Browning ; the 
copy is still preserved by Mr. Cosmo Monkhouse. The 
picture, above which is written the first line of ' Maud,' 

1 1 hate the dreadful hollow behind the little wood,' 

represents Tennyson seated on a sofa, in a loose coat and 
waistcoat, showing a plentiful shirt-front and a black tie. 
His left hand grasps his foot, which is curiously curled up ; 
in his right he holds a very small ' Maud.' The figure 
throws a heavy shadow on the wall and the sofa. 

A story is told of yet another reading of ' Maud,' when 
Tennyson turned to a lady at his elbow in the midst of the 
passage — 

* Birds in the high Hall-garden 

When twilight was falling. 
Maud, Maud, Maud, Maud, 

They were crying and calling ' — 

with the question, 'What birds were calling?' The lady, 
willing to justify her taste for poetry, replied : ' Nightingales, 



MAUD 125 

I imagine.' 'Ugh!' said the poet, with a shiver; 'what a 
cockney you are ! Do nightingales cry "Maud"? Certainly 
not. But rooks do : " Caw, caw, caw, caw." It 's very like 
it, at any rate.' 

These rough little speeches were thoroughly characteristic 
of the man ; and within the same year Henry Taylor re- 
counts to his wife a very similar crudity. They were dis- 
cussing at Lady Harriet Ashburton's the constancy of her 
friendship, the conversation resulting from the attention 
that lady was bestowing upon Tennyson. Sir Henry 
Taylor recalled a friend (Professor Goldwin Smith), who, a 
year ago, had been the lion of her admiration, and wondered 
whether she would forget the poet, as she seemed to have 
forgotten her old friend. The discussion was growing 
warm, when Tennyson interrupted it. 'By what you say 
yourself,' he said, ' it appears that you don't show me any 
particular favours/ 

But his friends always understood that the rough manner 
concealed a genuine geniality. 

It was in the summer of the year of ' Maud ' that the 
University of Oxford conferred on Tennyson the degree 
of D.C.L., and there is a story that tells how, when the 
Laureate, with his rough, unkempt hair, moved up the 
Sheldonian, an undergraduate from the gallery asked him, 
with impressive earnestness, ' Did they wake and call you 
too early this morning ? ' And Tennyson probably enjoyed 
the jest as much as any one. 

After the momentary outburst of dramatic passion in 
' Maud ' Tennyson began to occupy himself with calmer 
themes. He was already busy upon ' Idylls of the King.' 
In 1857 he printed, for private circulation only, 'Enid and 
Nimue,' which must have been one of the first of the series, 
and presumably dissatisfied its author. At any rate it was 
never issued to the public, and during that year he pub- 
lished nothing. His work, meanwhile, was pleasantly 
interrupted by occasional visits from authors anxious to 
find in his conversation some reflection of his work. 

Bayard Taylor, who walked with him to the Needles on 
a June afternoon in 1857, left the poet with a lasting 
impression of the variety and spontaneity of his knowledge. 



126 ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON 

Nathaniel Hawthorne also encountered Tennyson, in 
company with Mr. Woolner, at the Manchester Exhibition, 
the date of their meeting being the 30th of July. Haw- 
thorne, with the true native touch of the American, was 
glad to find the poet ' as un-English as possible . . . softer, 
sweeter, broader, more simple than ' an American. Bayard 
Taylor carried from Farringford a keen impression of his 
host's appearance. 'Tall and broad-shouldered,' he found 
him, 'as a son of Anak, with hair, beard, and eyes of 
Southern darkness.' 

Prince Albert was an occasional visitor at Farringford 
also, and on one occasion a new servant, who opened the 
door to the Prince Consort when the Tennysons were 
out, and asked the visitor's name, was horribly awed at 
finding that she was quietly standing face to face with 
royalty ! 

Tennyson was very busy, how r ever ; and the friends who 
came to see him brought the only interruption he allow r ed 
to his work. The country people, says Dobell, watching 
him from an admiring distance,, were 'amused at his bad 
hat,' but impressed with the certainty that he was writing 
his poetry all the while he crossed and recrossed his lawn 
with the mowing-machine. It was so, too, that the little 
boy of the well-known anecdote pictured him, walking about 
* making poets for the Queen,' under the stars. 

So the next two years passed in the preparation of the 
'Idylls,' 1858 eliciting but one contribution from his pen — 
an addition of two stanzas to the ' National Anthem ' on 
the occasion of the marriage of the Princess-Royal. The 
poet was busy on his masterpiece. On June 22, 1858, he 
read to Arthur Hugh Clough certain passages in 'Guinevere,' 
which was now r approaching completion. ' I hear,' wrote 
FitzGerald to Professor E. B. Cowell, t that Tennyson goes 
on with " King Arthur," but I have not seen or heard of 
him for a long time.' In the following year, however, his 
friends were to hear of him to the fullest and most gratifying 
advantage. For in 1859 he published the 'Idylls of the 
King.' 



CHAPTER VIII 

ID YLLS OF THE KING 

The ' Idylls of the King,' the most characteristic and 
perhaps the most permanent of Tennyson's contributions 
to English literature, have developed gradually, as it were, 
from the smallest seed to the full flower of poetry. The 
great English story, the unique romantic charm of which 
had crossed the path of Dryden to be intercepted by Sir 
Richard Blackmore, accompanied Tennyson with its fascina- 
tions from his earliest youth. 'The Lady of Shalott,' 
published in the 1832 volume, showed the poet's mind 
gradually stretching towards its subject, on which it closed 
with a stronger hold ten years later in ' Sir Galahad ' and 
'Morte d' Arthur.' | 'The Lady of Shalott,' a lyric full of 
tone and colour, as Tennyson's early lyrics were apt to be, 
gains especial interest from the faint echo of the latter epic 
which it catches and preserves to us, like the first essay of 
a mind in a dream as yet unrealised. The hopeless love of 
the Lady herself, the river journey to towered Camelot, 
the loveless musing of Lancelot over the body of the 
maiden dead for love of him — all these things foreshadow 
the spirit and the mild melancholy which characterise the 
'Idylls' themselves. 'Sir Galahad,' with its rich and 
sumptuous decoration, its subtle variations of onomatopoeia, 
and its mediaeval atmosphere of Catholicism, suggested a 
more accurate treatment than the theme finally received. 
' Sir Lancelot and Queen Guinevere ' contained another 
development of the subject, and the ' Morte d'Arthur ' 
carried the final plan past its starting-point. Here the 
mind of the poet seems to have fixed upon the subject and 
the manner of treatment, and to have perceived the possi- 
bilities and capacities of the Arthurian legend. It is a 
fragment — a broken piece of that epic — 'some twelve 

books ' — which his Everard had burned \ but it is some- 

127 



128 ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON 

thing more than a faint Homeric echo, for in it the poet's 
blank verse has assumed its individual manner, its half- 
melancholy languor, its even, dreamy cadence, and its 
haunting music. The germ of the ' Idylls ' has ripened 
into something tangible and definite. 

The epic, as we have it, however, took time in its growth. 
The original 'Idylls,' which appeared in 1859, were but 
four in number, 'Enid,' 'Vivien,' 'Elaine,' and 'Guinevere.' 
Three years later the dedication was added, and in 1869 
'The Coming of Arthur,' 'The Holy Grail,' 'Pelleas and 
Etarre,' and 'The Passing of Arthur.' In 187 1 'The Last 
Tournament' appeared in The Contemporary Review, and 
in 1885 'Balin and Balan ' was added to 'The Round 
Table.' Subsequently 'Geraint and Enid' was split into 
two parts, the first part being entitled ' The Marriage of 
Geraint,' the second, which begins with the passage 

1 O purblind race of miserable men,' 

retaining the old name of ' Geraint and Enid.' 

This epic, although a gradual work, is best treated as a 
single poem without respect to the date of its component 
parts. For the gradual fusion of the different divisions into 
a whole has given it its essentially epic character, and 
welded the isolated stories into a connected and progressive 
narrative, moving from a definite starting-point to a clear 
and distinct goal. It has lent to the history a sense of 
unity and completeness so thoroughly defined that it is 
impossible to treat any portion of the poem apart from the 
rest, without missing its exact significance and its place in 
the scheme. The ' Idylls ' must be studied in their entirety, 
if their intention is to be properly understood. 

The story of Arthur, as told in Tennyson's epic, moves 
from the brightness of a spring morning, through the burden 
and heat of the day, into the pale twilight of a failure that 
is still illumined by success. 

The epic opens with the triumphant coming of the King, 
and his marriage in the May morning, when all the fields 
were bright with spring : 

' The sacred altar blossom'd white with May, 
The Sun of May descended on their King.' 



IDYLLS OF THE KING 129 

The air is full of the song of the feast, the clang of battle- 
axe, and the clash of brand ; the world is bright with the 
hope of the fair beginners of a noble time, for whom ' the 
old order changeth, yielding place to new.' 

The story then follows the fortunes and loves of Arthur's 
best, the wooing of haughty Lynette, and the victory of 
timid Enid — set over against each other as a clear and 
tender contrast ; and the first note of discord is struck in 
the tale of the harlot Vivien and her poisoned whisperings, 
that left not 'Lancelot brave, nor Galahad clean.' The 
suggestion of sin ripens in the story of Elaine ; where 
Lancelot's guilty love for his Queen blinds him to the pure 
self-effacing passion of the lily maid of Astolat ; and the 
final breaking up of the order is traced from the quest of 
the Grail and the sin of Lancelot to the last weird battle in 
the west, where Arthur falls. 

The first three books — 'The Coming of Arthur,' ' Gareth 
and Lynette,' and 'Geraint and Enid,' are concerned with 
the rise and flower of the Round Table, the remainder with 
its decadence. 'The Coming of Arthur' stands as a 
prologue, as the 'Passing' serves as an epilogue, to the 
whole epic, which thus opens with the victorious march of 
Arthur, his defeat of the Kings, and his marriage with 
Leodogran's daughter Guinevere, whom he had loved from 
the moment that he first saw her watching him from the 
castle walls, though she had missed him. 

In his manner of tracing the growth of Arthur's prowess, 
and his hold upon his knights, Tennyson differs so often 
from Sir Thomas Malory, that it would be tedious to follow 
the separation step by step. One characteristic change, 
however, claims our attention. The proof of kingship, the 
drawing of the sword from the anvil, which in the earlier 
writer lends the main interest to 'The Book of Merlin,' is 
discarded by Tennyson, who seeks with characteristic taste 
a more picturesque and elfin scene. For him there is a 
greater charm in the Excalibur that rises from the bosom 
of the lake, across which Arthur rows to take the mystic 
sword, and read the twin legends ' Take me,' and ' Cast me 
away.' The element of mystery which clothes the coming 
and the passing of Arthur makes a special appeal to the 

I 



i3o ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON 

imagination of the poet. Merlin and the Lady of the 
Lake — 

'Clothed in white samite, mystic, wonderful,' 

are there, and Merlin is ready with his riddling rhyme — 
'From the great deep to the great deep he goes. 5 

From this point the mystic side of the story melts away : 
there are pageantry and music, battle-axe and brand, and the 
love-fortunes of the knights to follow. Only as the realm 
breaks up in the quest of the Grail, the world beyond, the 
world of mists and shadows, closes about the Round Table 
anew. The touch is delightfully the poet's own, and to 
this strange half-seen environment, this entertainment of 
spirits unawares, ' The Idylls ' owe a great share of their 
beauty and their power. But what is gain on one side is 
loss on another. The dreamy mystery, which enriches 
' The Idylls ' as a poem, impoverishes them as a history. 
The story of Arthur becomes an epic, but a visionary epic : 
it ceases to be national, as it begins to be world-wide. 

There were two courses before the poet. On the one 
hand, it was open to him to lend himself to archaeology, to 
burthen his shoulder with facts, and give us, as nearly as 
might be, a faithful picture of the age he depicted :— an 
age of rapine and ravishment, of lust and brute power, an 
iron age, with selfishness and greed for its gods. The 
poem would still have been an epic, and a national epic, 
but the picture would have been repellent. Tennyson 
chose the other course. He idealised the time, and deified 
the man : he gave us a blameless king in an age of chivalry, 
ruling a court, faulty in act, but pure in aim, — a court set 
out of the world, yet vexed with the trouble and sin from 
which no seclusion could ensure it. He chose the poem, 
and let the history go ; and it were hard to say that the 
result has not justified his choice. There were dangers in 
the way, however, — some scarcely to be avoided. The 
most serious danger w r as that affecting the character of the 
King and his relation to his chivalry. Faultlessness, or all 
but faultlessness, is in its very nature so greatly wanting in 
warmth and colour, that it is traced less easily in its own 
manifestation than in its effect upon its surroundings. In 



IDYLLS OF THE KING 131 

losing outline it loses strength. And it is so with Tennyson's 
Arthur. His influence and the influence of his oath are 
felt throughout the poem ; but the real, tangible presence 
of the King is too little with us. We learn of him through 
the things that others say of him, rather than through the 
things he says himself. Once or twice he speaks, but the 
words are cold and rhetorical. With a saddened half- 
rebuke he stands by Elaine's bier, and turns to Lancelot : 

' After heaven, on our dull side of death, 
What should be best, if not so pure a love 
Clothed in so pure a loveliness ? ' 

And to the knights, returned from the quest of the Grail, 
his mind full of the mystery, his eyes half-seeing things 
unseen, he speaks at length, telling them that the King's 
part is not to follow wandering fires, but to stay at home 
about his kingdom's business — business in which he, too, 
has visions 

' In moments when he feels he cannot die, 
And knows himself no vision to himself, 
Nor the high God a vision, nor that One 
Who rose again.' 

Our nearest touch to Tennyson's Arthur, our clearest 
sight of the integrity and god-like strength of the King, 
however, are in the moments of his greatest trouble — his 
parting with Guinevere, and his passing from his realm. 
The cold, white purity of the King, who was ever virgin 
but for her, takes no passionate farewell of the golden hair 
and imperial moulded form : he stands above her like a 
recording angel forced to bear witness against her to his 
pain. Like an icy rain of hail his words sweep down upon 
her, as she lies at his feet : 

* Liest thou here so low ? . . . 
Well is it that no child is born of thee. 
The children born of thee are sword and fire, 
Red ruin and the breaking up of laws. 



Better the King's waste hearth and aching heart 
Than thou reseated in thy place of light, 
The mockery of my people and their bane. ' 



It is all too pure, too rigid, too divine for the weak woman- 



132 ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON 

hood of Guinevere : it is only when he pauses that she can 
creep one pace nearer to him. And at the end the King 
gives her her gleam of hope to share with him : 

6 Let no man dream but that I love thee still. 
Perchance, and so thou purify thy soul, 
And so thou lean on our fair father Christ, 
Hereafter in that world where all are pure 
We two may meet before high God, and thou 
Wilt spring to me, and claim me thine, and know 
I am thine husband — not a smaller soul, 
Nor Lancelot, nor another.' 

So does the blameless King show most godlike when most 
intensely man. 

His last utterance, from the gloomy barge, as he lies in 
the arms of the three queens, is instinct with the prophecy 
of death, and is less a revelation of his character than a 
hint of the future. The King has done his work ; the 
night of visions has come, and he is no more a vision to 
himself. The old order, which he changed at his coming, 
changes again with his passing : the change is natural and 
ordained, one good custom must not, by the law of God, 
corrupt the world : 

' The whole round earth is every way 
Bound by gold chains about the feet of God.' 

Bedivere, more manlike than his King, cries out for the 
loss of the old order, for the barren board and the scattered 
chivalry ; but Arthur looks beyond across the ages, and 
sees that all is good. And even as his vessel grows to a 
speck upon the deep, the new sun rises bringing the new 
year. . 

This is Tennyson's Arthur, not quite a king of dreams 
and shadows, nor altogether a king of war and conquest. 
There is something in him of the manlike, much that 
claims his kinship to the gods. He stands as a great, 
luminous background to the story of his knights ; as a 
wide, bright sky that shows up against the breadth and 
brilliance of its purity the darker shadows that move be- 
fore it. 

Of these the nearest to the spirit of the times, as one 
may picture them, the wildest and the roughest, is Geraint. 



IDYLLS OF THE KING 133 

He knows the weakness of womankind, and is ready from 
the first breath of suspicion to doubt the Queen. And 
doubting her, he fears for his own Enid, lest the evil 
influence of the court should overtake her too ; and so he 
whips her off into solitude, a prey to jealousy and fear. In 
him we get the rude, uncultured mind, prone to suspect, 
unable to fathom innocence, catching at every pretext for a 
doubt. In him, too, we get the rough, wild spirit that 
leaps to vengeance at the moment. He waits in silence 
till Enid has reached the last strait of resistance, and then 
he springs upon Earl Doorm and shows no mercy. Once 
assured, he is as ready to believe as before he was to doubt. 
Henceforward he will die rather than doubt. The man is 
an admirable type of the mind that wants stability in itself; 
that cannot live by faith, that must be given certainty by 
sight, and, w T hen once he has seen, believes. 

Side by side with him, and in vivid contrast, stands 
Gareth, the young knight eager to give up rank and re- 
putation for the quest of the right. His modesty does not 
rebel against the humility of the kitchen : rather than be 
apart from Arthur he will be a scullion in his service. 
Never was knight more tried than Gareth throughout his ride 
with Lynette : every doughty deed he does for her is met 
with scorn, every service he shows her is repelled. *And 
all the while his courage is never shaken, nor his strength 
abated, till Death himself is overthrown. His is the en- 
thusiasm of youth, and the modesty of greatness; of all 
the knights of Arthur's court he shows the fairest character. 
Galahad is divine, but more than man ; Lancelot is man- 
like, but less than knight ; Gareth has the enthusiasm of 
Pelleas without his headstrong madness, the strength of 
Geraint without his impatient jealousy. He stands at the 
beginning of the 'Idylls' as a fair ensample of Arthur's 
knighthood at its best, before the evil days came or the 
hours drew nigh in which his court could confess that it 
took no pleasure in purity, and had lost the savour of 
things lovely and of good report. 

In solitude, apart, through the midst of the motley crowd 
of good and bad, looking neither to the right hand nor to the 
left, his eyes fixed on the lode-star beyond him, Galahad 



134 ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON 

moves across the epic, through an atmosphere of mystery 
and simple holiness : 

* And one there was among us, ever moved 
Among us in white armour, Galahad.' 

Begotten by enchantment, said some, living a life of en- 
chantment towards a mystic end, Galahad was with the 
Round Table, but not of it. He seems to stand surrounded 
by a halo of light from the moment when first he sits in 
Merlin's chair, and the roof is riven, and the beam of light 
breaks into the hall with the Holy Grail stealing down it, 
to the last wild scene, when the last far bridge springs into 
fire ; and, amid the shouts of all the sons of God, he passes 
like Elijah into the beyond. There is no book of the 
' Idylls ' so perfect in its scheme, so brilliant and retentive 
in its imagery, as 'The Holy Grail' There is no passage 
in modern poetry, perhaps, more complete in itself, more 
mystically vivid, than the scene of Galahad's final passage 
into life. It is one of those scenes that illustration w r ould 
ruin, because it stands almost beyond the possibilities of 
pictorial art. It reminds the reader of scenes in the 
Revelation, scenes that the eye can picture in the air, but 
the hand cannot fix upon the page. It is through the events 
that surround him that Galahad lives to us ; it is as though 
the God he served flashed His glory around him, to give 
the world an evidence of things hoped for, but unseen. 
The simplest purity never reveals itself to the eye ; w T e learn 
w T hat we know of it by stray glimpses, which only tell us 
how little we understand it after all. So it is with Galahad : 
he is an influence rather than a life, a sentiment rather than 
a revelation. 

But at the end, when the rest return unsatisfied, his 
absence brings with it a sense of something achieved ; for 
though his chair may desire him in vain, they know that, 
beyond the limits of their ken, 'they crown him other- 
where.' 

At the opposite pole is Tristram, the embodiment of a 
passion that is nearer to lust than to love. He and his 
Isolt have drunk the love-potion, and are henceforward lost 
to life and honour ; they live only for their passion. ' The 



IDYLLS OF THE KING 135 

Last Tournament ' gives a final glimpse of the court before 
Guinevere's flight; and the heart of Arthur's chivalry is 
mildewed. The Tournament of the Dead Innocence is 
a travesty, a poor mockery of the old honourable jousts. 
The King is not there ; but in his seat Lancelot, the false 
friend, sighs wearily, and sees the rules of the tourney 
broken, and the custom of knighthood overset, while the 
meed-of purity falls to Tristram, himself the falsest of them 
all./ Then, in that sympathy of nature with the event which 
Tennyson is so fond of exercising, the thick rain falls, as 
the day closes in upon a scene of discontent : 

' Our one white day of Innocence hath past, 
Though somewhat draggled at the skirt.' 

Tristram passes from his triumph to his love ; and the 
scene between Tristram and Isolt is the nearest approach 
to passion in the ' Idylls.' The love of Lancelot and the 
Queen, usually hinted at rather than expressed, glows into 
evidence in the farewell scene in ' Guinevere ' ; but the 
fulness of the ruin of the court is nowhere shown so clearly 
as in 'The Last Tournament/ It is said that Tennyson 
changed the wording in one passage in deference to the 
criticism of his friends, who thought the passion too pro- 
nounced ; but the strength and suggestion of the scene 
remain. Tristram's love is at love's lowest; even in the 
presence of his Queen, with her hand in his, he can put her 
far enough from him to imagine her lost to him altogether, 
when once she has lost the charm of her womanhood. 

1 May God be with thee, sweet, when old and gray, 
And past desire ! ' 

he says, and rightly enough Isolt answers that Lancelot 
would have scorned to utter anything so gross, even to the 
swineherd's malkin. Such a scene is well reserved for the 
final note in the descending scale. Almost unconsciously 
we compare the picture of Tristram throwing the circlet 
about Isolt's neck — 

* Thine Order, O my Queen ! . . .' 

with that other picture of Percivale's sister girding the 
sword-belt of her hair round Galahad's waist — 

1 I, maiden, round thee, maiden, bind my belt.' 



136. ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON 

The ' Idylls ' live through these contrasts, and through 
them stand as a mirror of knighthood of every age. 

In Pelleas we find another type. He is the young 
enthusiast, who starts upon life believing it full of beauty, 
and at the first sight of sin, at the first experience of 
faithlessness, is maddened into unbelief of everything. 
With a boyish eagerness worthy of his name, 'Sir Baby,' 
he confides his hopes and fears to Gawain, who under pro- 
mise to win his lady for the boy, succeeds in winning her 
for himself. And Pelleas, who had believed him true and 
Ettarre pure, is goaded into madness, into 'wrath and 
shame, and hate and evil fame.' 

Gawain, the reckless man of his world, is only a note in 
the story : a note of irreverent selfishness — that cares for 
nothing but its own pleasure, that spends itself unprofitably, 
with a laugh at the vanity of human wishes. Among the 
lesser figures that complete the picture a few stand out in 
relief. Sir Bors, the reverent knight whose thoughts lie too 
deep for words, recedes within himself as the others clamour 
of their quest of the Grail, and blesses himself with silence. 

1 "Ask me not, for I may not speak of it: 
I saw it ; " and the tears were in his eyes.' 

Modred, with the foxy face, is felt through the whole story 
as an evil influence is felt, with a half perception that ripens 
into certainty at the end. Bedivere, like a faithful watch- 
dog, stands at the ingress and egress of the poem, a type of 
the antique service that no unfaithfulness in others can 
estrange. The first of Arthur's knights, he is the last to 
leave him. His very hesitation to cast away Excalibur has 
root in the desire to preserve some memory of the King 
that may keep his fame alive. 

But the figure that holds the eye and attracts the attention 
most keenly throughout the epic is the figure of Lancelot. 
From the first he is the knight that Arthur loves the best ; 
it is he that is sent to bring Guinevere to the King. From 
the first he is the knight that strikes the fancy of the Queen 
herself; it is he whom she notices in all the throng, and 
marks for the goodliest. And throughout the history he 
proves himself the goodliest in prowess and in courtesy ; 



IDYLLS OF THE KING 137 

there is never a word of his recorded that stands as a blot 
upon his chivalry. In all but the one great failure of his 
life he is a 'knight peerless'; and even that failure cannot 
altogether separate him from sympathy. Lancelot's failure 
is mainly the misfortune of circumstance. He is sent to 
bring the Queen to Arthur; the Queen has already been 
attracted to him. The first impression produced upon her 
is accentuated by contrast with the King ; she cannot 
breathe in the cold, white light of his purity : she wants 
warmth and colour, which she finds in Lancelot. The way 
lies so simply before him : and, from the first moment of 
their understanding, their love becomes at once the glory 
and the disgrace of Lancelot's life. It nerves him to deeds 
of prowess, through all of which he remains modest and 
unassuming. 

'In me!' 
he says, 

' there dwells 
No greatness save it be some far-off touch 
Of greatness to know well I am not great.' 

But it keeps him, too, from a truer and a purer love, which 
was made to make him happy : it separates him from 
Elaine. It keeps him from the Grail : it grows into his 
life till it strangles every other ambition and every other 
yearning. The quest is not for him. And at the end it 
sets him in battle against the King. To trace Lancelot's 
life is to find him set, much as the hero of a Greek drama, 
in the toils of the gods who are too strong for him : a man, 
with the noblest aims and aspirations, dragged by the force 
of circumstance into acts entirely alien to his nature. Ever 
and again the good spirit breaks out in him : at Elaine's 
death, at the regathering of the knights from the quest of 
the Grail — in a word, after the two great proofs of his 
failure — he knows himself for what he is, and loathes his 
baser nature. But temptation is there : Guinevere is still 
beside him : he cannot turn back. Fate and a woman 
hold him, and wreck his life between them. 

The women of the ' Idylls ' claim less attention than the 
men : but they, too, have diversity and character. Lynette, 
haughty and imperious ; Enid, meek and lovable ; Elaine, 



138 ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON 

tender to weakness ; Ettarre, the obdurate, self-conscious 
beauty ; Isolt, fiery and passionate— each is a type and an 
example. Two stand out more conspicuously — Guinevere 
and Vivien. 

The odds against the Queen are overwhelming : her life 
is warped from its beginning. She is a woman made for 
love, with a warmth of passion in her veins, which must be 
satisfied. Mated to Lancelot she would have been constant, 
and would have passed for pure : wedded to the King she 
is starved for lack of love, and her womanhood forces her 
to seek satisfaction outside the limits of her honour. She 
never understands Arthur : his thoughts and ways are 
inaccessible to her : she moves upon a lower level of aim 
and intellect. 'There are thousands now — such women :' 
the marriage of ill-assorted minds has no better illustration 
than in the life of Camelot. She only needed to be shown 
the King's love : she could not take it on faith. When at 
last he proves to her the depth and strength of it, and she 
knows that after all her faithlessness he still loves her, she 
is satisfied. She has seen his love : it has been proved : 
she understands him now : 

* Ah my God, 
What might not I have made of thy fair world, 
Had I but loved thy highest creature here ? 
It was my duty to have loved the highest : 
It surely was my profit had I known : 
It would have been my pleasure had I seen. 
We needs must love the highest when we see it, 
Not Lancelot, nor another.' 

Of Vivien it is hard to speak ; for the poet, striving to 
keep his subject within limits, has outlined rather than 
expressed her. And the character is better outlined : it 
scarcely repays study. She stands, of course, at the lowest 
point that womanhood can reach, — not only wanton, but 
revelling in her wantonness \ not only unclean, but un- 
willing to leave any name cleaner than her own. The 
picture of the court would have been incomplete without 
her, and the poet has sketched her with unquestionable 
taste and reticence. She strikes, too, the first note of 
unfaith : scandal is ever dearest to those with whom scandal 



IDYLLS OF THE KING 139 

is most concerned. Even Arthur is not spared, her defaming 
and defacing leave 

'Not even Lancelot brave, nor Galahad clean.' 

But to consider the characters employed in the ' Idylls ' 
is to make a very insufficient survey of the subject. The 
interaction of character on character, and the general 
conduct and progress of the epic, might be profitably 
treated in a volume of itself. Such things as can be said 
here must be said concisely and in brief. 

The story rests its epic unity on its confinement within 
the limits of the fortunes of Arthur. It starts upon the 
morning on which he takes up his kingdom, and ends with 
the night on which he lays it down. The early chapters 
of the story describe the rise, the later chapters the fall, of 
the Round Table. But the poet has been attracted very 
little to the period of ascendency : a few lines in * The 
Coming of Arthur/ and a stray allusion here and there in 
the following poems, are all that he gives to the beginnings 
of the kingdom ; he is mainly interested in its ruin. And 
his treatment of the subject is at once interesting and 
characteristic. 

In Tennyson's narrative the failure of Arthur is traced to 
two very diverse passions which enter the court and destroy its 
chivalry, — a religious passion, which spends itself in the quest 
of the Grail, and a physical passion, which starts with the 
love of Lancelot and Guinevere, and ends in the prevalence 
of that 'loathsome opposite' of the purity and innocence 
which the King had imagined to be the heart and soul of 
his knighthood. These two passions, standing at the 
antipodes of motive, work together to the same end, and 
unite in the destruction of Arthur's scheme. The quest of 
the Grail has been so generally regarded as the purest, most 
single-minded outcome of the age, that Tennyson's use of 
it is the more singular and the more acute. The light in 
which he regards the quest is essentially the light in which 
he himself walks ; his attitude towards it is the attitude 
most characteristic of the man. The spirit of Tennyson's 
poetry is a spirit of calm, reasoning progress, — as fully 
averse, on the one hand, to a lifeless stagnation, as, on the 



140 ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON 

other, to an untimely assertion of right. The happy life 
appears to him to lie in the calm pursuit of the 

1 One far-off divine event, 
To which the whole creation moves; ' 

the order of the universe is an order slowly broadening 
down 

* From precedent to precedent.' 

M?/8ei/ ayav might be set as a motto upon his title-page. 

It is this spirit that prompts Tennyson to trace the down 
fall of Arthur's court from the moment when it seeks 
excess ; and excess is sought at its poles. At the one limit 
stands the religious ecstasy, at the other the sensual ; each 
an excess, and each equally fatal. Arthur's knights, as 
Tennyson pictures them, were straining after something 
outside the bounds of their knighthood in the pursuit of their 
visionary Grail : they were losing the substance of their life 
in following its shadow. The excess of ecstasy which 
religion brought them was as unfitted to their even purity 
and simple rectitude, as the most sensuous excess of ecstasy 
which could weaken them through love. The more eager 
they became, the greater was their failure. For it was not 
the fiery Lancelot, spurring on after the vision, who saw the 
Grail in a perfect revelation ; but Galahad, whose whole 
quest was calm and unimpassioned, who set aside all fever 
of desire, and sought the sign with the easy confidence of 
virtue. The other knights were not made for visions, nor 
apt for heavenly revelation; their lives were lives of knightly 
deeds, which religious ecstasy could only warp from their 
straight course. It was this taking of too much upon them- 
selves that helped to ruin their kingdom ; this tendency to 
presumption and prematurity, which was rooted in an un- 
warranted self-confidence. 

On the other side was the physical excess — the growth of 
impure love ; and the two excesses combine naturally and 
with ease. A discontent with his environment, an unsettled 
yearning towards something undefined, a curiosity to learn 
all the secrets that life has to tell — these emotions, moving 
together, throw the man into either extreme, — at one 
moment into an unhealthy religious enthusiasm, at the 



IDYLLS OF THE KING 141 

other into a passionate outburst of sensuality. The two 
extremes have root in the same emotion, and are approached 
by the same series of desires. But the one is apt to pass 
for virtue, the other for vice. In fact, both are vices • both 
throw the mind off its balance, and turn its course from that 
middle way which is the safest. On occasion the two 
ecstasies combine, and Lancelot, seeking the Grail and 
remembering Guinevere the while, is at his wildest, most 
unmanageable moment. The two passions struggle in him, 
and make his mind a hell. The preservation of the healthy 
mind in the healthy body is Tennyson's creed, no less in the 
' Idylls ' than elsewhere. Whatever tends to throw the 
mind into an extreme is unhealthy, and so unmanly. The 
King himself, the strongest and truest of them all, was not 
of the Quest. He saw that his duty held him at home, 
and he continued in the ordinary round of his life, while 
his knights were following the false fires. The visions of 
his life were stronger — and not less beautiful — because 
they were free of passion. For Tennyson's true knight and 
happy warrior is the man who, not being passion's slave, 
lives on the highest level of striving manhood, moving 
onward to a spiritual city, which is only to be won by the 
endurance of a man and the purity of a God. 

c For a man is not as God, 
Burthen most godlike, being most a man.' 



FACSIMILE OF MS. FROM ' GARETH AXD LYNETTE.' 



CHAPTER IX 

FROM THE IDYLLS TO THE DRAMAS 

The first four Idylls, ' Enid,' * Vivien,' ' Elaine/ and 
1 Guinevere/ which appeared in 1859, were considered 
at the time rather as four distinct studies of female char- 
acter than as the portion of an incomplete epic. Taken 
by themselves, the character-study would naturally seem 
to be the most emphatic reason for their existence ; it is 
only as they fall into their places in the entire work that 
the women sink into the background, and the history of 
the Round Table grows into prominence. But this growth 
was needed to lend the epic its full importance, and the 
* Idylls/ as they first appeared, bore a less urgent claim to 
recognition than their completion has earned them. They 
stood as four separate, and in part unconnected, poems, 
circling round four diverse women. That their period and 
environment were the same was no evidence of unity in 
the work : they were no more parts of a whole than were 
4 Adeline/ 'Margaret/ ' Isabel/ and 'Lilian. 5 This incom- 
pletion explains a lack of enthusiasm in their reception. 
It is easy to be wise when the event has passed, and to 
insist that the critic should have seen the significance of 
the movement, and understood that these first poems were 
only the germ of a full and proportioned epic. But the 
gift of foresight is rare : and the ' Idylls ' met with no very 
expectant reception. FitzGerald turned from them to look 
back nearly twenty years with the retrospect of regret, and 
bewail to W. H. Thompson the loss of some of Tennyson's 
earlier work which had been destroyed in the London days 
— no doubt, during the process of selection which ensured 
the 1842 volumes from failure. 'I wish,' he said, 'I had 
secured more leaves from that old "Butcher's Book/' torn 
up in old Spedding's rooms in 1842, when the press went 
to work with, I think, the last of old Alfred's best.' It 

142 



FROM THE IDYLLS TO THE DRAMAS 143 

required time and completion to prove that it was only 
with the appearance of the * Idylls' that ' Alfred's best' 
had matured ; and the momentary dissatisfaction was also 
due in part to a change in the poet's attitude and utterance. 
The public mind likes to fix upon some obvious trait or 
mannerism in an author, to establish that trait as his char- 
acteristic, and to test every new work in search of it. If 
the trait is present, the work is worthy of the author; if 
there is a change, he is declining. This popular estimate 
is, of course, founded upon an absolute fallacy. It pre- 
supposes in every author the faculty of finding at the out- 
set the medium in which he works most successfully, and 
the subjects most congenial to his talent — a faculty which 
is scarcely ever present to the young writer. It is only 
through the experience which is built of less successes that 
the author passes to his own peculiar triumph. To regard 
the smaller achievements as measures for the larger is to 
lose all sense of perspective and proportion. It fared so 
with Tennyson. His mellifluous lyrics and tender ballads 
had led the public to expect of him a charm of sound that 
disregarded sense ; a voice, as it were, of a singer heard 
in the distance across a summer lawn, the words lost amid 
the space of flowers and fruit that lay between. ' In 
Memoriam ' struck a new note, deeper, and with a longer 
resonance ; but the true chord was not found yet. ' Maud ' 
burst out into a fresh melody, and assumed a dramatic 
movement ; the poet was nearer his own element by now. 
In the ' Idylls ' the true harmony was developed. There 
was dramatic force and dramatic progress, together with 
a thoroughly keen insight into character, and the story was 
told in a metre which was essentially the poet's own. 
Tennyson's blank verse, gradually growing in depth and 
roundness, attained in the ' Idylls ' a deep-mouthed music 
which is even Homeric. With an unbroken melody it 
combines a masculine strength, which peculiarly fits it for 
the medium in which an epic should unfold itself. It has 
music without effeminacy, strength without harshness ; and, 
above all, it never grows monotonous. It is the metre in 
which Tennyson has done his best and most individual 
work, and the failure of his imitators to catch his char- 



144 ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON 

acteristic melody is a proof that he has brought into 
literature a music which is all his own. But it was not 
the music his critics expected of him, and the appreciation 
was not immediate. Later, in their complete form, the 
* Idylls' were to be recognised as Tennyson's most char- 
acteristic work. And in this connection it is pleasant to 
recall the story of the old Breton landlady, who, when the 
poet was ending his stay under her roof, refused to tender 
him any bill, or to accept any gratuity, since he was the 
man who sang so beautifully of 4 Our King Arthur.' 

Two slighter poems appeared in the same year as the 
1 Idylls.' In The Times for May 9th, 1859, over the 
signature 'T.,' Tennyson printed a copy of verses called 
1 The War,' written as an inspiration to the Volunteer 
movement. It is a bluff, blustering bit of stormy music: 

' There is a sound of thunder afar, 

Storm in the South that darkens the day, 
Storm of battle and thunder of war, 
Well, if it will not roll our way. 

Storm ! Storm ! Riflemen, form ! 
Ready, be ready to meet the storm ! 
Riflemen, Riflemen, Riflemen, form ! 

Form, be ready to do or die ! 

Form in Freedom's name and the Queen's ! 
True, that we have a faithful ally, 

But only the Devil knows what he means. 
Form ! Form ! Riflemen, form ! 
Ready, be ready to meet the storm ! 
Riflemen, Riflemen, Riflemen, form ! ' 

His other contribution was ' The Grandmother's Apology,' 
afterwards renamed ' The Grandmother,' which appeared 
in Once a Week, with an illustration by Sir J. E. Millais. 
4 The Grandmother' has the quiet religious charm which 
gives distinction to so many of Tennyson's character 
sketches; it is resigned without being didactic, enjoying 
all the easy faith of the simple-minded. The old grand- 
mother, as her memory travels back, feels her dead sons 
about her in the kitchen, loses all sense of time and loss, 
and looks out towards her own end with restful expectation. 
It is a peaceful monotone in the twilight of life, beautiful 



FROM THE IDYLLS TO THE DRAMAS 145 

with the beauty of a calm work perfected. Sir J. E. Millais' 
design illustrated the subject satisfactorily. Before an 
open window, with flowers beyond, stands a plain table, 
on which lies an open Bible. The old lady sits to the 
right of the picture, her head pillowed in an arm-chair. 
Annie is at her feet, with her left hand between the old 
lady's ; a cat laps milk in a corner. It is a domestic pic- 
ture of unbroken tranquillity. 

The ' Idylls ' were scarcely published when Tennyson 
was out of England, travelling in Portugal with Mr. F. T. 
Palgrave, afterwards Professor of Poetry at Oxford. They 
visited Vigo, Lisbon, and Cintra, and spent some time at 
the monastery of da Cortica. They also took a natural and 
especial pleasure in wandering about Joao de Castro's 
garden of the Perrha Verde, and in sitting by the fountain 
which marks the spot where Camoens read the first cantos 
of his ' Lusiad ' to the king. It was a hurried visit, but it 
left pleasant memories, some of which were gracefully col- 
lected into a short paper, written by Mr. F. T. Palgrave 
for a periodical called Under the Crown. His account 
makes further mention of a bull-fight, at which the travellers 
were present : a bloodless one, by-the-bye — the poets were 
indisposed to brutality. 

It was intended, we are informed by Professor Palgrave 
himself, that the journey should be continued to Cadiz; but 
at Lisbon Tennyson was taken ill ; and the travellers, there- 
fore, returned to England. As some recompense for the 
disappointment, Tennyson took his friend to Cambridge 
and showed him round the Colleges. 

In the autumn of the same year, while the Tennysons 
were entertaining Dean Stanley in the Isle of Wight, a 
curious little controversy was stirring at Cambridge around 
the Laureate's reputation. A bust of Tennyson had been 
executed by Mr. Woolner and presented to Trinity College ; 
and a question arose as to the position in which it might 
most fitly be placed. Tennyson's warmest admirers wished 
it set in the Library, a room hitherto devoted exclusively 
to portraits and busts of men whose reputation was finally 
assured. This was declared by an opposing party to be 
too high an honour for any living head, and these dis- 

K 



146 ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON 

sentients eventually carried the question. The bust was 
placed in the vestibule, whence it was subsequently re- 
moved into the Library at a date when Tennyson's position 
seemed irrevocably secure. FitzGerald had his customary 
comment on the situation. 'I read, or was told,' he wrote 
to W. H. Thompson, ' they wouldn't let old Alfred's bust 
into your Trinity. They are right, I think, to let no one 
in there (as it should be in Westminster Abbey) till a 
hundred years are past ; when, after too much admiration 
(perhaps), and then a reaction of undue dis-esteem, men 
have settled into some steady opinion on the subject ; sup- 
posing always that the hero survives so long, which of itself 
goes far to decide the question. No doubt Alfred Tenny- 
son will do that' There is a ring of sincerity in the last 
words which goes far to condone many little instances of 
distrust and discontent which mar FitzGerald's admiration 
for his friend. 

Meanwhile Tennyson's genius was trying a new and not 
altogether sympathetic field. He seems to have distrusted 
his achievement in the ' Idylls,' and so to have made a 
sudden descent from chivalry to the cares and problems of 
nineteenth century life. The reaction was indeed complete ; 
for, from his study of the highly nurtured circle, wearing 
fine raiment in kings' houses, he swung out into the con- 
templation of humble mercantile life, contending with petty 
difficulties and harassed by inconsequent trials. The next 
few years found him busy upon 'Sea Dreams,' 'Enoch 
Arden,' and 'The Northern Farmer;' and — with a change 
of view which was not actually a change of spirit — upon 
' Aylmer's Field.' These poems argue a curious restless- 
ness in the taste of the writer : he seems uncertain still of 
the subjects most congenial to him, and the change is not 
an improvement. The true spirit of Tennyson was not 
framed of such slight elements as 'Sea Dreams' and 
'Enoch Arden.' His delicate touch and his sensibility 
were squandered and ill-spent among the sordid seaside 
lodgings, or the low fishermen's huts upon the beach. 
Tennyson has lacked the delicate art of M. Francois 
Coppee, whenever he has approached subjects which lack 
beauty in themselves. In trying to adorn the scene he has 



FROM THE IDYLLS TO THE DRAMAS 147 

obliterated its characteristic features. He has had no 
keen dramatic insight into a sordid situation : his art is 
thrown away on such coarse canvases. He felt this him- 
self after a few attempts, and returned to his chivalry again. 
But for fully five years from the appearance of the first four 
* Idylls ' Tennyson passed through an interesting period of 
unsettlement, which requires at least a passing survey. 

The first of these poems of the reaction was 'Sea 
Dreams/ which appeared in Macmillari s Magazine for 
January i860. As is the wont of the first step in a 
change, it sprang at once to the antipodes of its prede- 
cessors. In none of the succeeding poems of this period 
was Tennyson occupied with such a narrow and unin- 
spiring theme. 'Sea Dreams' is the story of a city clerk, 
who, trusting the word of a man more influential than 
himself, throws all his savings into a single venture, and is 
ruined. The whole poem is occupied by a midnight con- 
versation between him and his wife, in which she pleads, 
at first unsuccessfully, but at last to his persuasion, for his 
forgiveness of the man who has ruined them. The two 
have dreamed in the early night, and the recital of their 
two dreams forms the theme round which the question of 
forgiveness groups itself. It is a little lesson in long- 
surTering, simple and unaffected as its surroundings, but 
in its very simplicity undramatic. The poet has not lost 
himself in his characters : both alike talk with an equal 
fluency of phrase. The clerk recounts his dream with a 
picturesque precision; his wife tells hers with the same 
warmth and proportion of colour. The poet is speaking 
all the while : we never forget that. But at the same time 
he speaks to such purpose: the poem is rich in phrases 
which have become a part of our literature. 

' And silenced by that silence lay the wife, 
Remembering her dear Lord who died for all, 
And musing on the little lives of men, 
And how they mar this little by their feuds. ' 



Or again 



1 Trusted him with all, 
All my poor scrapings from a dozen years 
Of dust and deskwork.' 



148 ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON 

Or even more notably, the lines quoted in a leading case 
in 1872 by the Attorney-General : 

c I stood like one that had received a blow : 
I found a hard friend in his loose accounts, 
A loose one in the hard grip of his hand, 
A curse in his God bless you. . . . 
Read rascal in the motions of his back, 
And scoundrel in his supple-sliding knee.' 

It is full of gems, this little poem, full of perfect phrases 
and flawless descriptions : but there is too much art for the 
subject. The humble theme is too delicately decorated : 
Tennyson is not occupied with a perfectly sympathetic theme. 

He had returned much more nearly to his own in 
'Tithonus,' a poem which Thackeray won from him for The 
Comhill Magazine of February i860. It was a great pride 
to the editor, his own daughter tells us, to have secured 
this poem, and he might indeed be proud of publishing a 
masterpiece so exquisitely fashioned and polished. 'Titho- 
nus,' which in the original opened a little differently — 

' Ay me ! Ay me ! the woods decay and fall,' 

is not only touched with Tennyson's richest colour, it has 
also a distinct place in his work as an utterance of his 
favourite creed. Mrfiiv ayav is once more its motto. The 
immortality which Tithonus desired turns to ashes in his 
mouth : he is sick of life, who cannot die. But 

1 The Gods themselves cannot recall their gifts,' 

and the boon he craved of them turns to a curse. He had 
taken too much upon himself: Time brought in its revenge. 
It is in the middle way of life and death that true happiness 
must lie. 

In 1 86 1 Tennyson was silent, except for a copy of verses, 
'The Sailor Boy,' published in Miss Emily Faithfull's 
Victoria Regia at Christmas. It reads as though it had 
been w r ritten at sea \ indeed it probably was, for in the 
early autumn of that year Tennyson and his wife were 
travelling on the Continent. In July Arthur Hugh Clough 
started, a dying man, to seek a new lease of life among the 
Pyrenees, and here he met the Laureate and Mrs. Tenny- 
son. It was during this journey that Tennyson wrote ' In 



FROM THE IDYLLS TO THE DRAMAS 149 

the Valley of Cauteretz.' For here, thirty-two years before, 
he and Arthur Hallam had passed in their exciting expedi- 
tion to the revolutionists; and here, during that time, he 
had conceived the notion of 'CEnone.' It was the sight of 
the Pyrenees and their scenery that suggested the descrip- 
tion of Ida. At this second visit with Clough he recalled 
the first journey with a painful pleasure, and talked freely 
with his friend upon the subject. In Clough's diary for 
September 7th, he recounts how he had walked with 
Tennyson to ' a sort of island between two waterfalls, with 
pines on it, of which he retained a recollection. ' It had, 
moreover, furnished him with a simile in 'The Princess. ' 
The old days came back to the poet and the old sensations 
revived, as they will under the influence of scenery which 
has been forgotten in the interval : 

'All along the valley, while I walk'd to-day, 
The two and thirty years were a mist that roll'd away ; 
For all along the valley, down thy rocky bed, 
The living voice to me was as the voice of the dead, 
And all along the valley, by rock and cave and tree, 
The voice of the dead was a living voice to me.' 

This was in September, and two months later Arthur Hugh 
Clough died at Florence. The valley of Cauteretz must, 
from that day, have had a dual message for Tennyson. 

Towards the end of 1861 'Helen's Tower' was privately 
printed by Lord DufTerin. The thin quarto pamphlet, in 
which it first appeared, bears on the title-page a steel 
engraving of the tower, and the next page has the following 
statement, printed in illuminated characters : 

xx day of November mdccclx 

This day at 3 of ye clock did I, Catherine Hamilton, 

christen this Tower by ye name, style, and title of 

HELEN'S TOWER. 

Catherine Hamilton. 
Whereof are we ye witnesses : 
Georgina de Ros. Archibald Hamilton. 

Caroline Eliz. A. Bateson. Thomas Verner. 

A. M. de la Cherois Crommelin. S. D. Crommelin. 
Frances C. Fitzgerald de ros. Tiios. Bateson. 
Blanche A. G. Fitzgerald de Ros. De Ros. 
Helen Selina Dufferin. Dufferin and Claneboyne. 

Richard Ker. 



150 ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON 

The book contains two poems, both unsigned. The first is 
entitled, 'To my dear Son, on his twenty-first birthday, 
with a Silver Lamp,' and is headed by the quotation ' Fiat 
Lux/ and dated June 21, 1847. The second is Tennyson's 
6 Helen's Tower.' On the last page, again illuminated, is 
another little manifesto : 

On Wednesday, October 23, 1861, 
Helen's Tower was finished, and the flag hoisted by us. 

Helen M'Donnell. 
Harriot Hamilton. 

The copy of the pamphlet in the British Museum has in 
manuscript on the pink paper cover: * Given to me by Lord 
DufTerin. R. S. Turner.' 

In the following year the ' Idylls ' appeared in a new 
edition, prefaced by the dedication to the Memory of the 
Prince Consort : and on the first of May the ' Ode ' sung at 
the opening of the International Exhibition was printed, 
and incorrectly printed, in most of the newspapers. A 
month later Erasers Magazine published an emended 
copy. 

The next year — the year in which Milnes was created 
Lord Houghton, was equally uneventful. i The welcome 
to Alexandra' and the ' Attempts at Classic Metres in 
Quantity' were the Laureate's only publications in 1863. 
The ' Welcome ' was originally printed as a four-page sheet, 
and sold in the crowd on the seventh of March, the day on 
which the Princess landed in England. It bore the imprint 
of Edward Moxon, and is now, in its original form, an 
extremely rare acquisition. The first draft is without five 
of the most spirited lines ; the passage, 

* Rush to the roof, sudden rocket, and higher 
Melt into stars for the land's desire ! 
Roll and rejoice, jubilant voice, 
Roll as a ground swell dash'd on the strand, 
Roar as the sea when he welcomes the land,' 

being a later addition. Thackeray gave a humorous picture 
of the poet, welcoming the Princess, in The Comhill 
Magazine for 1863. 'I would respectfully liken his 
Highness,' he said, ' to a giant showing a beacon torch on 
a windy headland. His flaring torch is a pine-tree, to be 



FROM THE IDYLLS TO THE DRAMAS 151 

sure, which nobody can wield but himself. He waves it : 
and four times in the midnight he shouts mightily, 
"Alexandra!'' and the Pontic pine is whirled into the ocean, 
and Enceladus goes home.' It is a graphic caricature. 

The * Attempts at Classic Metre, 5 skilful but not very 
interesting successes, appeared in The Cornhill Magazine 
in December. 

The following year is much more noteworthy. Tenny- 
son's work in 1864 began with his Epitaph on the Duchess 
of Kent, which is inscribed on Theed's statue at Frog- 
more : 

' Long as the heart beats life within her breast 

Thy child will bless thee, guardian mother mild, 
And far away thy memory will be blest 
By children of the children of thy child.' 

These lines were also printed in the Court Journal for 
March 19, 1864, and are, perhaps, inferior to but one of 
his epitaphs, the lines on Sir John Franklin. 

But it is the ' Enoch Arden ' volume which renders the 
year considerable. Besides ' The Grandmother,' 'Sea 
Dreams,' ' The Sailor Boy,' and the ' Attempts at Classic 
Metre,' the book, dedicated, in a tender poem, to his wife, 
contained three new and important pieces — * Enoch Arden/ 
' Aylmer's Field,' and the 'Northern Farmer '(old style). 
This was the chief and last achievement of the Laureate's 
reactionary period, and the poems showed a return, gradual 
but evident, to his natural manner. For while ' Sea 
Dreams' stands almost in a class by itself, 'Aylmer's Field' 
recurs rather obviously to the manner of ' Dora ' and the 
early Idylls, and the ' Enoch Arden ' separates itself still 
further from the uninviting life of a city clerkship. It 
draws nearer to the world of adventure, of c moving 
accidents by flood and field,' of shipwreck and desolation. 
It possesses, too, one strange gleam of mystery which frees 
the poem from a bondage to the obvious. It is a return to 
nature and to art. But neither this poem, nor ' Aylmer's 
Field,' are really representative of Tennyson's work. Both 
have one failing in common : they set themselves to tell a 
story, without having a sufficiently strong story to tell. 
' Aylmer's Field ' is the history of a thwarted love, warped 




LADY TENNYSON. 
After the picture by G. F. Watts, R.A. 



FROM THE IDYLLS TO THE DRAMAS 153 

by the pride of parents, and turned at last into a disastrous 
issue. Neither the characters nor the plot have novelty. 
The one bold effort of the poem is the recital in verse of 
a funeral sermon, based on the text, 'Your house is left 
unto you desolate/ This is a strong and unaccustomed 
experiment, which finds vent in a vigorous piece of de- 
nunciatory rhetoric. It is effective as a tour deforce, but its 
length sets it somewhat out of proportion to the rest of the 
story. The conclusion is overweighted by the massiveness 
of the oratory. The story of ' Aylmer's Field ' was supplied 
to Tennyson by Mr. Woolner, and it is characteristic of 
his manner of work that he refused to be satisfied with a 
bare outline, but demanded from his friend a lengthy re- 
lation of all the incidents. 

The story of 'Enoch Arden' is equally simple. Two 
fisher-lads love the same girl : Enoch wins her, Philip 
remains solitary. Enoch goes to sea, and his vessel is lost ; 
after a while, Annie, his wife, marries Philip. Then Enoch 
returns, and, learning the truth, keeps his identity a secret 
till he finds he is dying. The poem has been dramatised, 
but it can scarcely have made a strong play ; the situations 
throughout are too inevitable. But in many respects it 
makes a fine poem. It is overcrowded with detail : every 
little domestic movement in the fishing-huts is recounted 
with painful precision, every little step in Annie's accept- 
ance of Philip is traced with tender solicitude. But it is 
animated by three strongly drawn characters — Enoch, the 
rough uncultured fisherman, amiable but not over sym- 
pathetic ; Philip, true, enduring, and a little insipid ; Annie, 
a type of simple uninspired womanhood, incapable of 
genuine passion and lasting faithfulness — leading the life 
of a quiet, domestic animal, without spirit or intellect. 
Each character is admirably drawn ; and the three move 
through a series of richly elaborated scenes. The descrip- 
tive passages are in Tennyson's happiest mood ; here is a 
perfect picture of the little village, contrasted with a stretch 
of tropic scenery on Enoch's desolate island : 

' Long lines of cliff breaking have left a chasm ; 
And in the chasm are foam and yellow sands ; 
Beyond, red roofs about a narrow wharf 



154 ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON 

In cluster, then a moulder'd church ; and higher 
A long street climbs to one tall-tower'd mill ; 
And high in heaven beyond it a gray down 
With Danish barrows ; and a hazel-wood 
By autumn nutters haunted, flourishes 
Green in a cuplike hollow of the down.' 

And then the contrast : 

1 No sail from day to day, but every day 
The sunrise broken into scarlet shafts 
Among the palms and ferns and precipices ; 
The blaze upon the waters to the east ; 
The blaze upon his island overhead ; 
The blaze upon the waters to the west ; 
Then the great stars that globed themselves in Heaven ; 
The hollower-bellowing Ocean, and again 
The scarlet shafts of sunrise, — but no sail.' 

And lastly there is the one little mystic touch, curiously 
introduced into so ordinary a relation, by which Annie is 
made to seek for an omen of Enoch's presence by opening 
her Bible at random. She puts her finger upon a text, and 
reads, ' Under the palm-tree.' Then she dreams of him, 
and believes him dead. It was the moment of Enoch's 
darkest hour on the desert-island, the hour before his rescue. 
This little touch — artificial, perhaps, but artistic, — is pre- 
cisely the touch of Tennyson ; and it has more than an 
artistic interest. It has its origin in a peculiar action of 
the poet's own mind, which may best be described in his 
own words. On the 7th of May 1874 he wrote as 
follows : 

' I have never had any revelations through anaesthetics, but a kind of 
waking trance (this for lack of a better name) I have frequently had 
quite up from my boyhood, when I have been all alone. This has 
often come to me through repeating my own name to myself silently, 
till, all at once, as it were, out of the intensity of the consciousness of 
individuality, the individuality itself seemed to resolve and fade away 
into boundless being, and this not a confused state, but the clearest of 
the clearest, the surest of the surest, utterly beyond words, where 
death was an almost laughable impossibility. The loss of personality 
(if so it were) seeming no extinction, but the only true life. ... I am 
ashamed of my feeble description. Have I not said the state is utterly 
beyond words ? ' 

One of these trances Tennyson describes in ' In 
Memoriam' (xcv.), a passage the significance of which is 



FROM THE IDYLLS TO THE DRAMAS 155 

generally missed. Here he recounts a vision of the old 
home-life in the evening, when Arthur seems to return to 
him, and commune with him. 

' The living soul was flash'd on mine.' 

He alludes to the sensation, too, in c The Ancient Sage,' in 
the lines beginning — 

1 More than once when I 
Sat all alone. ' 

This tendency to trance is also the wellspring of Tenny- 
son's affection for mysticism : and his return to the super- 
natural side of nature, in 'Enoch Arden,' proved that he 
was releasing himself from his fetters. The time was 
indeed come for a change of spirit. For though something 
of Tennyson's domestic epoch may have been due to his 
own misgivings, much must have been inspired by the 
tendency of the moment. The most individual author 
must be influenced by the literary atmosphere in which he 
finds himself; and at this time Tennyson was surrounded 
by a very depressing fog of prejudice and convention. 
Poetry had sunk to the most sordid and valueless themes, 
to the loves of the curate and the governess, and the 
inconsiderable annals of the provincial market-town. A 
pitiful prudery found every strong and vital subject in- 
discreet, drooping its eyelids and raising its hands at a 
love which was not blessed by the approval of parents, 
and sanctified by the smile of the family breakfast-table. 
It was impossible to write in such an atmosphere without 
contamination ; and Tennyson's work suffered in the natural 
course of suffering. It became, for the moment, rigid, 
straitlaced, finical. It never lost its beauty of form or its 
perfection of finish ; but it lost momentarily the sense of 
the subjects worthiest itself and the art it followed. Mr. 
Swinburne, replying a little later to the attacks of his 
critics, summed up the situation in a few vigorous phrases. 
' With English versifiers,' he said, ' the idyllic form is alone 
in fashion. The one great and prosperous poet of the 
time has given out the tune, and the hoarser choir takes it 
up. His highest lyrical work remains unimitated, being in 
the main inimitable. But the trick which suits an idyll is 



156 ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON 

easier to assume; and the note has been struck so often 
that the shrillest songsters can affect to catch it up. We 
have idylls good and bad, ugly and pretty; idylls of the 
farm and the mills ; idylls of the dining-room and the 
deanery ; idylls of the gutter and the gibbet. If the Muse 
of the minute will not feast with " gig-men" and their 
wives, she must mourn with costermongers and their 
trulls.' But the phase was only momentary. A revolu- 
tion was in store for poetry. The sudden and extraordinary 
success of Poems and Ballads in 1866 gave an impetus to 
the pre-Raphaelite school. Swinburne and Rossetti hurried 
poetry breathless to the opposite pole, to the fevered couch 
of ' Dolores ' and the amorous arms of 'Faustine.' Once 
more the excitement of emancipation leapt to extremes ; 
once more Tennyson stood in the middle way. But the 
movement influenced him. After 'Sea Dreams ' and ' Enoch 
Arden ' he wrote * Lucretius ' and ' The Last Tournament.' 
The bacchanalian frenzy and passion of the pre-Raphaelites 
was softened by the natural calm of Tennyson's own 
temperament; but there came to him, too, an access of 
warmth and colour. And, with the new spirit, he returned 
to his old self once more. 

The other noteworthy poem in the ' Enoch Arden ' 
volume, 'The Northern Farmer,' is interesting as an ex- 
ample of Tennyson's dramatic habit in its most developed 
form. His poems in dialect are as faultless and convincing 
as the late Mr. William Barnes's verses in the Dorsetshire 
tongue, and in verisimilitude they are more remarkable 
even than these, since Mr. Barnes wrote only the language 
of a people among whom he moved in daily intercourse. 
The forerunner of ' To-morrow,' ' Owd Roa,' ' The Northern 
Cobbler,' and ' The Spinster's Sweet-'Arts,' cannot be passed 
over without recognition. Trench was particularly pleased 
with this first of the series. ' Have you read,' he wrote 
to the Bishop of Oxford, '"The Northern Farmer," in 
Tennyson's last volume ? Every clergyman ought to study 
it. It is a wonderful revelation of the heathenism still in 
the land, and quite the most valuable thing in the book.' 
Not quite the most valuable thing, perhaps ; but certainly 
the most human, the most vigorous, the most dramatic. 



FROM THE IDYLLS TO THE DRAMAS 157 

The first proofs of the volume went to press with the 
title, ( Idylls of the Hearth/ a name which was probably 
cancelled as being too closely allied to c Idylls of the King.' 
These proofs, which are now in the possession of Mr. 
J. Dykes Campbell, are full of corrections in Tennyson's 
handwriting, ' The Northern Farmer ' having an unusually 
large number of emendations. Whole verses are inter- 
polated, long passages cut away. The final correction of 
the name must have been reserved for the last revise, and 
the original title has a particular interest from its indication 
of the tone of Tennyson's mind at the moment. His muse 
was seated by the hearth, dozing, as it were, in the genial 
warmth of the fire. The awaking was to follow. 

During this period Tennyson was very quiet, and we 
learn but little of him from his associates. It is only here 
and there that an incident breaks through the monotony of 
his life. On the 12th of February 1864 we find him in 
the midst of a circle of congenial friends. On that day 
Robert Browning signed his will in the presence of 
Tennyson and Mr. F. T. Palgrave ; and in the evening 
there was a dinner-party at Mr. Palgrave's house at York 
Gate, Regent's Park. Tennyson and Browning were there, 
Mr. Gladstone and Sir John Simeon, Mr. Woolner and 
Mr. Reginald Palgrave, Monsignor Patterson and Mr. John 
Ogle, Francis H. Doyle, Mr. F. T. Palgrave himself, and 
his brother, W. Gifford Palgrave. 

For the last-named Tennyson had a great respect. ' I 
think,' he once said to Professor F. T. Palgrave, 'your 
brother is the cleverest man I ever saw;' and it is he 
whom the Laureate addresses as Ulysses in the 'Demeter' 
volume. He had, indeed, earned the title, having been 
Consul in 1866 at Soukhoum Kale, in 1867 at Trebizond, 
in 1873 at St. Thomas, in 1876 at Manilla, and in 1878 
Consul-General in Bulgaria. . To these he added in 1879 
the consulship at Bangkok, and in 1884 he was Consul- 
General of the Republic of Uruguay, a position which he 
still held at his death. 

He and Tennyson, however, met but seldom. At the 
dinner above mentioned they merely encountered each 
other ; in September 1887 they spent an afternoon together. 



i 5 8 



ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON 



It was in this same year (1864), on the 8th of April, that 
Garibaldi paid the visit to Tennyson to which the Laureate 
refers in the poem ' To Ulysses/ to which allusion has been 
made above. Garibaldi was much struck by the profusion 
of foliage in the Farringford garden, the 'cedar green,' the 
'giant ilex/ and the 'yucca which no winter quells.' 'I 
wish I had your trees,' he said. And, before he left, he 



added another to the number, a 



Wellingtonia 



gigantea^ 




THE QUARRIED DOWNS OF WIGHT. 



which he planted in the grounds as a souvenir of his visit. 
The little act of courtesy was happily remembered by the 
poet, as he told his Ulysses how he loved to walk amid 
the riches of his garden by ' the quarried downs of Wight ' : 

1 Or watch the waving pine which here 
The warrior of Caprera set, 
A name that earth will not forget 
Till earth has roll'd her latest year.' 

It was in 1864 or 1865 that Tennyson first made the 



FROM THE IDYLLS TO THE DRAMAS 159 

acquaintance of Mr. Frederick Locker, to whom the present 
writer is much indebted for the following facts relating to 
a friendship which his correspondent describes as ' one of 
the greatest pleasures of his life.' Shortly after meeting 
Mr. Frederick and Lady Charlotte Locker, Lord Tennyson 
was their host at Grayshot Hall, near Haslemere ; and the 
Lockers were frequently with the poet at Farringford and 
Aldworth. Tennyson, on his side, was not seldom Mr. 
Locker's guest in Chesham Street, at Rowfant, or New 
Haven Court, Cromer. About 1870, when Mr. Locker 
was living at 91 Victoria Street, Lord Tennyson secured 
a pied-a-terre at Albert Mansions, opposite his friends, in 
order to be near them. They saw much of each other at 
this time, often taking a morning walk together in the 
Park. Lord Tennyson occasionally rented a furnished 
house for a month or two, generally in the Belgravian 
district. He was present at Rowfant, Sussex, in 1874, at 
Mr. Locker's second marriage to Jane, daughter of Sir 
Curtis Lampson, Bart., whose name Mr. Locker added to 
his own. Lord and Lady Tennyson, too, were present at 
Westminster Abbey, in February 1878, when their second 
son, Lionel, was married to Eleanor, the only daughter of 
Mr. Frederick and Lady Charlotte Locker. Tennyson 
and Mr. Locker-Lampson travelled upon the Continent 
together on three occasions, visiting Paris in i868 ; Paris 
and Switzerland in 1869, and St. Moritz, Engadine, about 
1872. 

In 1865 Tennyson was elected a member of the Royal 
Society ; but the year is chiefly marked by a sorrow. On 
February 21, 1865, he lost his mother, who died at Well 
Walk, Hampstead, in her eighty-fifth year. She was buried 
at Highgate. The loss of her tender and unselfish love 
helped the Laureate towards a temporary seclusion, and 
increased his dislike of observation, which had already 
become almost morbid. He began to threaten to leave 
Freshwater, — 'frightened away,' as FitzGerald told Frederick 
Tennyson, 'by hero-worshippers.' The old hatred of the 
digito monstrari, which Charles Knight had noticed in him, 
was growing upon him more and more ; and the threat took 
form in 1869, in the removal of the family to the new 



i6o ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON 

house, Aldworth, which he had built for himself on a 
remote terrace, under the crest of Blackdown, near Hasle- 
mere. Henceforth this spot shared with Farringford the 
associations of the Laureate's home. The building of 
Aldworth, however, was not due to a desire of seclusion 
alone. The air of Farringford proved scarcely bracing 
enough for Mrs. Tennyson, and it was in her interest that 
Tennyson first visited Blackdown in the autumn of 1866, 
with a view to fixing a site for his new house. A consulta- 
tion was held with Mrs. Gilchrist, at Brookbank, and, after 
several spots had been inspected, the site on w T hich Aid- 
worth now stands was chosen. Without doubt its seclusion 
commended it ; and the distress at publicity was further 
proved, in the year of his mother's death, by Tennyson's 
refusal of a baronetcy. This step was as popular at the 
time as his subsequent acceptance of a peerage was un- 
popular, and in both cases we feel now that the sentiment 
was strained. There was no real room for congratulation 
or regret in either case ; the question was too trivial, or too 
strictly personal, for serious discussion. 

The popularity inspired by this refusal was almost for- 
feited, however, by an action much worthier consideration. 
The reader may perhaps recall the name of a little boy 
w T ho, entering Louth Grammar School after the Tennysons 
had left, was fired with admiration by the story of their 
literary prowess. The years that intervened had destined 
the boy to a life of action, and the names of Tennyson and 
Eyre reconnect themselves under strange circumstances. 
A revolution of the blacks in Jamaica had demanded a 
violent suppression, and Eyre had acted with singular 
valour and readiness in discomfiting the insurgents. A 
rather ill-advised and over-energetic body of persons, sym- 
pathising w T ith the revolutionists, prosecuted Eyre for cruelty, 
and the case created some commotion. On such occasions 
the emotional portion of the community is wont to lose its 
discretion in enthusiasm ; and the present was an excellent 
opportunity for a sentimentalism which, perhaps, infected 
both parties. There was too much protestation all round. 
On the one side were ranged John Stuart Mill and Herbert 
Spencer, Professors Huxley, Freeman, and Goldwin Smith, 



FROM THE IDYLLS TO THE DRAMAS 161 

while Carlyle, Kingsley, Tennyson, and Mr. Ruskin were 
among a body of subscribers who originated an Eyre 
Defence Fund. Tennyson supported his contribution by 
a vigorous letter, in which he deprecated the unreason- 
ableness of this controversial hysteria. ' I send my small 
subscription,' he said, 'as a tribute to the nobleness of 
the man, and as a protest against the spirit in which a 
servant of the State, who has saved to us one of the islands 
of the Empire, and many English lives, seems to be hunted 
down.' The letter was characteristic of Tennyson, who 
always refused to be influenced by party cries and sectarian 
malice. It caused grave offence, however, to many pon- 
derous and narrow-minded persons, who read into the 
discussion aims and sentiments altogether alien to the 
disputants. 

Between 1864 and 1867 Tennyson made but one pub- 
lication, a selection from his works in square duodecimo. 
This volume, issued in 1865, contained six new poems, 
' The Captain. 5 ' On a Mourner,' ' Three Sonnets to a 
Coquette,' and a song, ' Home they brought him slain with 
spears,' an altered version of the song in ' The Princess/ 
rewritten for musical use. The new rendering has a charm 
of its own, from a certain allusiveness and a vagueness of 
suggestion which are more artistic than the fullest detail. 
The removal of the face-cloth and the strategy of the nurse 
are unrecorded. Only the child plays with his father's 
lance and shield, and in his game reminds her of her loss. 
Then with an outburst of grief she reproves him : 

1 O hush, my joy, my sorrow ! ' 

There is a suddenness of pathos here which is irresistible. 
This version was many years afterwards published with a 
musical setting by Lady Tennyson. 

The other additions are scarcely noteworthy. 'The 
Captain,' which is the most considerable of the five, is virile 
and spirited, but not noticeably Tennysonian. 

But in 1867 Tennyson printed privately, at the press of 
Sir Ivor Bertie Guest at Canford Manor, Wimborne, an 
eminently graceful poem, 'The Window: or the Loves of 
the Wrens,' a little cantata, which he wrote, 'German- 
ic 



1 62 ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON 






fashion/ for Sir — then Mr. — Arthur Sullivan's music. The 
original edition contained this dedication — 

' These little songs, whose almost sole merit 

— at least till they are wedded to music — 

is that they are so excellently printed, 

I dedicate to the printer. ' 

It was a new experiment, and Tennyson's friends had fears. 
' Is there ' a tune ? ' asked FitzGerald of the music, ' or 
originally melodious phrase in any of it?' And he adds, 
rather naively : c that is what I always missed in Mendels- 
sohn.' FitzGerald did not invariably doubt, however. 
He wrote to Sir W. F. Pollock in a very different strain. 
' You might suggest,' he said, 'to Mr. Sullivan or some com- 
petent musician to adapt the Epilogue part of Tennyson's 
" King Arthur," beginning 

" And so to bed, where yet in sleep I seem'd 
To sail with Arthur," 

down to 

i 'And war shall be no more," 

— to adapt this, I say, to the music of tbat grand last scene 
in "Fidelio," beginning dreamily, and increasing, crescendo, 
up to where the Poet begins to feel the truth and stir of 
day, till Beethoven's pompous march should begin, and the 
chorus, with " Arthur is come."' 

Apparently Sir Arthur Sullivan was not competent, to 
FitzGerald's taste, for original writing. But whatever the 
musical critic may have thought of his setting of ' The 
Window,' there can be little question of the suitability of 
the lyrics to their object. They are melodious and varied, 
affording the composer infinite opportunity. Take, on the 
one hand, the sweep and whistle of the wind on the hill : 

' Follow, follow the chase ! 
And my thoughts are as quick and as quick, ever on, on, on. 

O lights, are you flying over her sweet little face? 
And my heart is there before you are come, and gone, 

When the winds are up in the morning ! ' 

Contrast this with the cold, eager crispness of the descrip- 
tion of winter : 



FROM THE IDYLLS TO THE DRAMAS 16 

' Bite, frost, bite ! 
The woods are all the searer, 
The fuel is all the dearer, 
The fires are all the clearer, 
My spring is all the nearer, 
You have bitten into the heart of the earth, 
But not into mine.' 

There is variety here, and to spare ; but there is more to 
follow : 

1 The wind and the wet, the wind and the wet ! 
Wet west wind, how you blow, you blow ! 
And never a line from my lady yet ! 

Is it ay or no ? is it ay or no ? 
Blow then, blow, and when I am gone, 
The wet west wind and the world may go on.' 

And again, as the love glows into life : 

1 Over the thorns and briers, 
Over the meadows and stiles, 
Over the world to the end of it, 
Flash for a million miles.' 

It is a medley of melody : and it would go hard with the 
composer who could not find ' a tune or an originally 
melodious phrase ' to match such music. 

The Canford Press issued, in the same year, another of 
the Laureate's works, 'The Victim/ which made its public 
appearance a few months later in Good Words for January 
1868. 

There was another and a far stronger poem, finished at 
this time, but published later — c Lucretius.' Here was the 
direct outcome of the Swinburnian movement, the emanci- 
pation of poetry from the shackles of prudery. It portrays, 
dramatically and with a breathless violence, the ravings of 
the maddened Lucretius, for whom his wife has mixed a 
love-philtre. He raves against love and the Gods ; he 
lashes himself into a frenzy, which at last draws the dagger 
against his life. At one moment he curses the animal 
passion, the next he revels in it : 

' How the sun delights 
To glance and shift about her slippery sides, 
And rosy knees and supple roundedness 
And budded bosom-peaks.' 



1 64 ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON 

This is that abandonment to physical beauty which swayed 
the Pre-Raphaelite school, and shocked and delighted the 
public who rushed to read Poems and Ballads. It shocked 
the publishers likewise. The proof-sheets of ' Lucretius ' 
w r ere sent out to America to secure simultaneous publica- 
tion ; and, when the poem appeared on May 2, 1868, 
in Every Saturday, in New York, the lines quoted above 
stood in the place they have subsequently filled. But 
meanwhile the prudery of the English publishers had 
emended the revise ; and the poem was printed in 
Macmillaris Magazine without the risky suggestion of 
realism. It is an amusing evidence of the tenor of the 
time ; for this shyness was not confined to the publishers. 
i Lucretius ' seemed to his friends, also, too free for 
Tennyson. ' Lucretius' Death,' said FitzGerald, ' is 
thought to be too free-spoken for publication, I believe : 
not so much in a religious as in an amatory point of view. 
I should have believed Lucretius more likely to have ex- 
pedited his departure because of weariness of life and 
despair of the system, than because of any love-philtre.' 
No doubt. But Tennyson was only recurring to history in 
this, or, at any rate, to the account given by the Eusebian 
Chronicle. The story may have been invented to spite 
the Epicureans, but it remains the most direct report of the 
poet's death. ' Once get a name in England,' complained 
the same critic of the same poem, 'and you may do any- 
thing.' It is very unenlightened, all this criticism : it 
shows a complete want of appreciation for the circum- 
stances. The true poet must catch the tenor of the time, 
and draw it to himself: he must broaden down slowly 
with precedent. It was the impulse of the moment to be 
frankly realistic : Tennyson was carried with the stream. 
In his course he reflected the surrounding life ; and to 
reflect is not to imitate. His claim to individuality was 
attracting new attention ; at this very moment Tennyson's 
reputation was spreading beyond his own countrymen. 
He was penetrating into the chateaux of France and the 
palaces of Italy. Octave Feuillet, describing in ' M. de 
Camors/ published in 1867, the daily life of a French 
country family, and describing it with a delicate faithful- 



FROM THE IDYLLS TO THE DRAMAS 165 

ness, pictured the household around the fire in the evening 
reading a new poem ' de Victor Hugo ou de Tennyson.' 
This was no making of a name in England alone; nor 
was such a reputation one with which the writer could ' do 
anything.' 

In July 1867 Tennyson was host to a grateful company, 
one of whom left a pleasant account of his visit. The 
Duke of Argyll, the Gladstones, and Lord Houghton were 
of the party, and the latter wrote of his visit as follows : 

* Our expedition to Tennyson's was a moral success, but a physical 
failure ; for we had so bad a pair of posters that we regularly knocked 
up seven miles from the house, and should have had to walk there in 
the moonlight, if we had not met with a London cab. The bard was 
very agreeable, and his wife and son delightful. He has built himself 
a very handsome and commodious house in a most inaccessible site, 
with every comfort he can require, and every discomfort to all who 
approach him. What can be more poetical? ' 

Every new visitor seems to have shown the same en- 
thusiasm ; and in the following year Longfellow journeyed 
to Farringford, to pay, as he gracefully puts it, ; homage to 
the mastery, which is thine.' The impression of the meet- 
ing remains in ' Wapentake : ' 

1 Not of the howling dervishes of song, 
Who maze their brain with the delirious dance, 
Art thou, O sweet historian of the heart ! 
Therefore to thee the laurel-leaves belong, 
To thee our love and our allegiance, 
For thy allegiance to the poet's art.' 

Tennyson's published work in 1868 was not considerable. 
1 The Victim,' a poem which almost suggests the touch of 
his American visitor, appeared in Good Words in January, 
with an illustration by A. Houghton; and in the same 
month Once a Week printed ' The Spiteful Letter.' In 
February, 'Wages' was issued in Macmillaris Magazine-, 
and a poem named ' 1865-1 866,' since suppressed, in Good 
Words for March. Two months later ' Lucretius J made a 
tardy appearance in Macmillaris Magazine. The lust of 
identification has found a vent in several suggestions with 
reference to the original of 'The Spiteful Letter.' But the 
author's own authority establishes the certainty that no 



1 66 ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON 

individual letter was intended. On December 24th, 1867, 
he wrote to Once a Week : ' It is no particular letter that I 
meant. I have had dozens of them from one quarter or 
another.' 

The poem which appeared in Good Words — ' 1865- 
1866/ — is a strange voice of solitude, akin to ' Break, 
break, break/ and the earlier ' No More/ It is full of the 
lonely sentiment of midnight, as it cries to the storm with 
the inarticulate cry of discomfort : 

( I stood on a tower in the wet, 
And New Year and Old Year met, 
And winds were roaring and blowing : 
And I said, " O years, that meet in tears, 
Have ye aught that is worth the knowing?" 

But there is no answer, nor any to regard. Only through the 

silence come the wailing of the waves and the moaning of 

the wind, 

' Old Year roaring and blowing, 
And New Year blowing and roaring.' 

The poem is printed in a decorative frame, designed by 
John Leighton. Above, a watchman sits between two 
winged bells, backed by telegraph wires. Below, Boreas 
blows and roars ore rotundo. There is a picture, too : the 
poet, in a loose cloak and soft hat, stands on a rampart 
with a stormy sea below. It is a very bad picture indeed. 

In February Tennyson paid a visit to Cambridge, the 
second recorded since his undergraduate days. He 
stayed at Trinity, at the Lodge, and one evening dined, in 
the room which is now the guest-room, with Mr. W. G. 
Clark ; the party including the Master of Trinity, Mr. W. 
Aldis Wright, and the late Mr. Pritchard, Savilian Professor 
at Oxford, himself a neighbour of the Tennysons at Fresh- 
water. 

The next year saw the Tennysons thoroughly established 
at Aldworth; where in December 1869 Sir Frederick 
Pollock stayed with them, and heard the poet read the 
' Holy Grail,' which was published at the close of the 
year, the volume including * The Victim,' * Wages/ and 
' Lucretius.' At the same time ' Pelleas and Ettarre/ ' The 



FROM THE IDYLLS TO THE DRAMAS 167 

Coming of Arthur,' and ' The Passing of Arthur/ were 
added to the ' Idylls.' With this publication the poet 
returned to his own again. The 'Holy Grail' has been 




ALDWORTH, SURREY. 



already discussed in its relation to the rest of the ' Idylls,' 
and little remains to be said in its praise. It will live 
as the purest, the most imaginative, and richly finished of 
the series, — a poem full of the deepest inspiration, and 



1 68 ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON 

the most refined and lofty thought. It has passages 
which, for mystic fancy and power, are unsurpassed in 
the language. 

Its appearance was followed by a little controversy. 
The Rev. Robert Stephen Hawker, Vicar of Moorwinstow, 
had already published in 1864 a poem called ' The Quest 
of the Sangreal/ which was itself no unworthy contribution 
to literature. The earlier author expressed some chagrin 
that Tennyson should have treated the same subject, fancy- 
ing that he had the claim to consideration which belongs of 
right to the first in the field. It was generally felt, how- 
ever, that the precedence lay with the other poet. Tenny- 
son's ' Idylls ' had been written and published long before 
Mr. Hawker's ' Sangreal'; and, in taking up his subject 
anew, Tennyson, it was held, was fairly continuing a 
scheme which he had himself originated. The discussion 
has little interest, save as an indication of the slight ground 
upon which a suspicion of plagiarism may be based. 

The Tennyson of this time must have been much as the 
Tennyson of old. Even when, on occasional visits to 
London, he could be persuaded to dine in society, he 
would insist after dinner on retiring to smoke; and amus- 
ing stories are current of his being invaded, in the solitude 
of an upper room, or even a garret, by bands of ladies who 
were determined to chat with him. He was always at his 
best over his pipe. It was thus that Mrs. Richmond 
Ritchie found him, in a top room in Eaton Square. ' There 
sat my friend/ she said, ' as I had first seen him years ago 
— in the clouds.' There was but little change from the 
Tennyson of thirty years before, whom William Howitt had 
sketched so clearly. ' You may come across him,' he had 
said, ' in a country inn, with a foot on each hob of the fire- 
place, a volume of Greek in one hand, his meershaum 
in the other, — so far advanced towards the seventh heaven 
that he would not thank you to call him back into this 
nether world.' The old hour, and the old port wine still 
claimed him. ' I have the great honour/ wrote Lord 
Houghton to his aunts on the 27th of March 1870, 'of 
entertaining Tennyson at dinner to-morrow. He insists on 
dining at seven, and on having some old port. I have 



FROM THE IDYLLS TO THE DRAMAS 169 

brought some from Fryston, which my father called " The 
Alderman," which is, I suppose, from the year when that 
horse won the St. Leger.' The poet was always conservative 
in his taste, as in his sentiments. 

In 1870 Tennyson lost an old friend: Sir John Simeon 
died at Fribourg in Switzerland. The body was brought 
home to be buried \ and a week elapsed between the time 
of its home-bringing and the day of the funeral. It was 
during this interval that Tennyson, walking ' in the garden 
at Swainston/ composed the exquisite lyric which bears that 
title. The sense of desolation within brought a feeling of 
loss without. ' The Prince of Courtesy ' was dead. 

1 Two dead men have I known 

In courtesy like to thee : 
Two dead men have I loved 

With a love that ever will be : 
Three dead men have I loved, and thou art last of the three.' 

This poem was first included in a cabinet edition of 
Tennyson's works, published by Messrs. H. S. King and 
Co., in 1874, a collection which was also enriched by the 
first appearance of 'The Voice and the Peak,' and ' England 
and America in 1872.' An addition of about 150 words to 
1 Merlin and Vivien ' was now made for the first time. 

The next year (187 1) saw the publication of 'The Last 
Tournament/ a poem which caught, more closely even than 
'Lucretius,' the spirit of the new poetry. The novelty was 
still unfamiliar. The public prudery, which had caused the 
correction in ' Lucretius, 7 led to another very similar altera- 
tion in 'The Last Tournament.' The lines 

' He rose, he turn'd, then, flinging round her neck, 
Claspt it, and cried, " Thine order, O my Queen ! " 
But while he bow'd to kiss the jewell'd throat, 
Out of the dark,' etc. 

stood in the original version, printed in The Contemporary 
Review ) as follows : 

1 He rose, he turn'd, then, flinging round her neck, 
Claspt it, but while he bow'd himself to lay 
Warm kisses in the hollow of her throat,' etc. 



170 ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON 

This was thought too realistic \ and yet, here again, the old 
was better. Even FitzGerald yielded to the dramatic power 
and energy of ' The Last Tournament.' ' He never ceases 
to be noble and pure,' he said. 

In 1872 Messrs. Strahan and Co. published a six-volume 
library edition of the Laureate's poems. In this collection 
several of the ' Juvenilia ' were restored, and the two sonnets 
' Alexander ' and ' The Bridesmaid ' took their place among 
his approved work. 'The Third of February 1852' was 
also added, this being the first acknowledgment of its 
authorship ; and ' Literary Squabbles ' — the original ' After- 
thought' in Punch — was now reprinted. The opening 
verses of * Idylls of the King,' which are addressed 'To the 
Queen/ made a first appearance in the same edition. 

Meanwhile ' Gareth and Lynette ' was undergoing its 
finishing touches : and in November Tennyson read it to 
Robert Browning and to Mr. Knowles. It was published 
in the following year, and highly praised by The Spectator 
and The Athenceum. In the autumn which preceded its 
appearance Tennyson was travelling in Norway, and left 
a vivid impression upon those who met him. Th'e year 
after his visit, the late Professor Ludwig K. Daa, the dis- 
tinguished Norwegian journalist and politician, himself 
a great lover of all things English, told Mr. Edmund 
Gosse that he had had the pleasure of showing the 
points of interest in Christiania to Tennyson ; but that his 
extreme near sight had prevented him from undertaking 
a journey into the interior, which would have had to be 
made by karjol. Professor Daa recorded, with patriotic 
satisfaction, the profound impression produced on the 
English poet by the voyage up the romantic harbour of 
Christiania. 

With ' Gareth and Lynette ' the period of the ' Idylls ' 
closed, to be re-opened, for one moment only, thirteen 
years later, with the publication of 'Balin and Balan.' In 
1874 'A Welcome to Marie Alexandrovna ' was printed, 
first on a single sheet, and subsequently in The Times. 

The poem caused some discontent, for reasons which 
it is difficult to revive; and The Examiner printed an 
exceedingly uncourteous comment on 'A Welcome to 



FROM THE IDYLLS TO THE DRAMAS 171 

Alexandrovna.' The anonymous poet addressed Her 
Majesty to this effect : 

' Victoria, mother of the English race, 
I, Tennyson, thy poet, one thing lack. 
Long since I owed my pension to thy grace ; 
Give me its ancient comrade now, The Sack.' 

The discontent and its cause are forgotten now ; the verses 
remain as a memento of i the spites and the follies/ The 
little discussion lived out its nine days' life, and then 
Tennyson entered upon a new phase of work. For the 
next few years he was to be principally occupied upon 
Drama. 



CHAPTER X 
QUEEN MARY AND HAROLD 

That Tennyson should have determined to give his attention 

to Drama can scarcely occasion surprise. Step by step, as 

this study has attempted to show, his work had been 

advancing towards dramatic art. The literary movement 

which he represented was essentially dramatic ; it always 

aimed at passing out of itself into the sufferings and 

achievements of others. It was so with 'Aurora Leigh/ 

it was so with ' Men and Women,' and it was equally so 

with 'Maud' and 'Idylls of the King.' But the dramatic 

talent has two distinct issues, the one physiological, the 

other psychological. To write a strong and successful 

drama the author must possess the power of identifying 

himself with motives and sensations alien to himself; he 

must hold the faculty of living the life he represents. This 

faculty is bestowed by the psychological side of the dramatic 

talent. But there is the other side, which (for want of a 

more distinctive title) may be called the physiological : the 

sense of action, of situation, of movement. Without these 

two elements a sound drama cannot be produced ; the 

sense of action and situation, standing alone, prompts to 

melodrama : the sense of analysis, standing alone, works 

out a psychological study — intense, but undramatic. 

The poets of the new movement, which was opening in 

1842, had enough and to spare of the psychological side of 

dramatic art. For a proof of this the reader needs only to 

turn to ' Bianca among the Nightingales,' and ' A Year's 

Spinning' in the one case, and to ' Mr. Sludge the Medium,' 

and ' Bishop Blougram's Apology ' in the other. With 

Tennyson he has always ' Maud ' and ' The Northern 

Farmer' to refer to. Here was an infinite psychology; 

but the sense of action and situation was scarcely a strong 

characteristic of the new school. There is movement and 
172 



Q UEEN MAR Y AND HAROLD 1 73 

incident in ' Strafford,' but there is a want of unity in the 
conception ; the events leap out of the poet's store pile 
mele: the sense of situation is lacking. ' In a Balcony' 
has much more vigour and concentration, but ' In a 
Balcony' is not a drama. It is merely a broken scene, 
as it were, from a play of vast possibility. The psycho- 
logical element in the Brownings and in Tennyson over- 
powered the physiological, and it was this tendency to 
mental analysis that prevented Tennyson from realising the 
expectations of his admirers, when he turned his attention 
to pure drama. The period of the dramas, extending over 
ten years, is a period of brilliant intellectual success, of 
artistic and dramatic failure. The workmanship of the 
dramas stands above all question. There are passages of 
nervous but virile energy, such as are scarcely to be found 
elsewhere in his work : there are evidences of a grasp on 
character that becomes at intervals Shakespearian. But 
the faculty that made Shakespeare a dramatist is usually 
lacking to Tennyson ; he misses the necessity of progress 
and the obligation of action. In two instances he combined 
both elements ; but three out of his five plays are sketches 
of character, psychological analyses, studies in motive. 
Without action, and without the technical sense of con- 
struction, they can never be dramas. 

' Queen Mary,' the first of the series, is also the longest. 
The first glance at the list of dramatis personce is bewildering; 
there are forty-five characters, without the supernumeraries. 
The other plays are less encumbered : ' Harold ' has twenty- 
three, and 'Becket' twenty-five personce. 'The Falcon,' 
1 The Cup,' and ' The Promise of May,' have comparatively 
small casts. But of the forty-five characters in 'Queen 
Mary' very few play important parts in the drama; not 
more than a dozen of the figures are intimately concerned 
with the action of the play. A brief survey of the drama 
will give some idea of its development. 

The play opens with Queen Mary's coronation, and 
immediately transfers its interest to Cranmer, who stands 
in immediate danger, since his name is among those who 
signed the Letters Patent conferring the crown on Lady 
Jane Grey. Cranmer, in contradiction to the advice of 



174 ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON 

Peter Martyr, refuses to fly. The scene then changes to 
St. Paul's Cross, where Father Bourne is preaching ; while 
Noailles, the French Ambassador, moves about the crowd, 
whispering of the curse of Papacy, and advocating the 
claim of Elizabeth to the Crown. The fourth scene 
transfers the action to the palace. Courtenay, Earl of 
Devon, being ambitious for the Crown, is uncertain whether 
to win Mary or to league with Noailles, Suffolk, Carew, and 
Wyatt, in an attempt to make the Spanish marriage an 
excuse for overthrowing Mary and setting Elizabeth on 
the throne. He is approaching Elizabeth, when Mary 
interrupts them, and, suspecting her sister's faith, orders 
her into comparative exile at Ashridge. Another change 
of scene brings us to Mary's room in the Palace, where she 
muses amorously over Philip's miniature. Her love for 
him is fixed ; and the entreaties and expostulations of 
Gardiner and Noailles have no influence with her. Simon 
Renard, the Spanish ambassador, is next introduced. He 
whispers his distrust of Elizabeth, and assures Mary of 
Philip's love. His assurance is fortified by the sudden 
arrival of Philip's letter, offering his hand to Mary. The 
Queen passes into the Council Chamber to declare her 
decision, and a few minutes later staggers back, half 
swooning, with the cry — 

* My Philip is all mine ! ' 

The second act opens with the hint of insurrection. 
Sir Thomas Wyatt, absorbed upon his father's sonnets at 
Alington Castle, is upbraided by Antony Knyvett for indol- 
ence at a moment of peril. The new comer brings Wyatt 
a letter in Courtenay's cipher, announcing the flight of 
Carew and the expected capture of the Duke. The bad 
news is lightened by the assurance that Courtenay is still 
with the insurgents. This letter stirs Wyatt to a show of 
energy, and from his window he addresses a fiery speech 
to the mob, urging them to resist the advances of Spain. 
In this way mischief is set afoot, and the second scene 
gives Mary's account of the rising, delivered to the Lord 
Mayor and Aldermen assembled. The Queen reiterates 
to them her determination to marry Philip, inviting their 



QUEEN MARY AND HAROLD 175 

confidence in the surety that, unless she knew that this step 
were best for the State, she would not entertain the pro- 
posal. The scene closes on a general oath of allegiance, 
and a note of distrust from Sir Ralph Bagenhall. A short 
scene on London Bridge shows Wyatt in full rebellion, 
with a hundred pounds offered for his arrest. A fourth 
change transfers the action to Westminster Palace, whither 
news comes of the successful advance of the insurgents. 
Courtenay advises the Queen's flight, when a messenger 
announces that the tide of the struggle has turned, and the 
insurrection is crushed. A further report declares Cour- 
tenay and the Princess Elizabeth to be parties to the rising, 
and the Queen orders both to the Tower. Even for her 
sister she knows no mercy : 

' She shall die,' 
she says : 

1 My foes are at my feet, and Philip King.' 

The third act opens at the conduit in Gracechurch, 
where a conversation between Sir Ralph Bagenhall and Sir 
Thomas Stafford gives opportunity to the former to de- 
scribe the marriage of Philip and Mary. The procession 
then passes, Gardiner urging the mob the while to 
shout c Philip and Mary,' in approval of the union. The 
play then stands still for some time while Bagenhall re- 
counts the execution of Lady Jane Grey. In the scene 
that follows in Whitehall we learn the downfall of Cranmer. 
The scene concludes with the hopeful intimation that 
Queen Mary has conceived a child. In the Great Hall 
in Whitehall on St. Andrew's Day the Peers are next 
assembled ; and Gardiner pleads with Rome for pardon 
for the nation's schism and separation from the Church. 
Cardinal Pole replies, and pronounces absolution, the 
whole assembly falling on its knees. Bagenhall alone re- 
fuses to bow down, and is committed to the Tower. The 
fourth scene, also laid in the Palace, spends itself in a long 
discussion of religious tolerance between Mary, Gardiner, 
Pole, Paget, and Bonner, ending in the condemnation of 
Cranmer, Hooper, Ridley, Latimer, Rogers, and Ferrar. 
The next move is to Woodstock where Elizabeth is 



176 ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON 

banished : and the early part of the scene is occupied with 
a milkmaid's song and the Princess's comments. A com- 
mand is brought to Elizabeth from Mary, ordering her to 
repair to town to wed Prince Philibert of Savoy, and after 
some reluctance she determines to obey. In the next 
scene, in the Palace, we learn from Philip that Elizabeth 
is indisposed to the match, but that he himself is deter- 
mined to see it effected. Simon Renard begs him to show 
a more amenable temper to his Queen, as it is a matter 
of public comment that her barrenness wearies him. 
Philip then prepares to bid farewell to Mary, as he is 
summoned to his father at Brussels; but Mary entreats 
him so eagerly to stay another day that he finally accedes, 
with an absolutely loveless frigidity. 

At the commencement of the fourth act Cardinal Pole 
brings the Queen a Petition begging her to spare Cranmer ; 
and she is presently waited on by a further deputation, 
consisting of Thirlby, Paget, and Lord William Howard. 
Mary declines, however, to show any mercy, and orders 
the writ to be made out that night. The next scene takes 
us to Oxford, where Cranmer lies in prison. He has 
determined to recant, with a fearful yearning for life, w T hen 
he learns from Thirlby that he is still to die. In a power- 
ful speech he curses the right hand that has wronged him 
and dooms it to the first flame at the stake. The act 
closes before St. Mary's Church at Oxford, whence 
Cranmer, after some of the finest eloquence in the drama, 
is led away to death. His end is recounted by Peters; 
and the act closes with Paget's epitaph on the Bishop — 

' Come out, my Lord, it is a world of fools.' 

The last act finds Philip once more in the act of parting 
from Mary. He desires her to declare war with France 
and to proclaim Elizabeth heir, since she stands between 
Mary and the Queen of Scots. Mary consents and begs 
Philip to remain ; but he is obdurate. Weary of the 
childless love of his wife, he reflects that Elizabeth would 
make him a more acceptable queen ; and he decides that, 
for this reason, he will prevent the marriage he had con- 
templated between her and Philibert of Savoy. The scene 



QUE EX MARY AXD HAROLD 177 

ends with the news that war has been declared against 
France, owing to her encouragement of a petty insurrec- 
tion by Stafford, who has landed at Scarborough. In the 
second scene Pole receives a summons to Rome to reply 
to an accusation of heresy. Then follows news of loss 
upon the Continent, and Mary prays that Calais may at 
least be spared her. At this juncture Feria arrives from 
Philip. The King has heard with pleasure that the Queen 
expects the birth of a child, and promises that he will soon 
be with her. Then the wrath of the Queen is stirred ; and 
she knows that Philip is avoiding her. In the next scene 
Feria approaches Elizabeth, to suggest the possibility of 
her marriage .with Philip. He mentions the Queen's 
serious illness ; and Elizabeth at once refuses to listen to him 
till she has hurried to her sister. There follows a sugges- 
tive picture of the outside of the Palace, with the voices of 
the night passing and repassing with news of the Queen's 
danger. In the last and most dramatic scene of all, Mary 
lies dying, heart-broken. She sighs that on her death two 
names will be found graven on her heart, ' Philip and 
Calais y while on Philip's (if, indeed, he have a heart), the 
name of ' Philip ' will stand alone. In the frenzy of death 
she springs from her couch to slash his face from the por- 
trait above her, and so is borne out to die. The word of 
her death is brought by Elizabeth, who is at once hailed 
Queen, and the play ends with a sombre voice of omen : 

* Bagenhall. God save the Crown ! the Papacy is no more. 
Paget {aside). Are we so sure of that ? 
Acclamation. God save the Queen ! ' 

It is the misfortune of so naked an outline as this that it 
must show the drama at its worst. But a fuller account 
could not serve to hide the principal deficiency in con- 
struction. The story itself is not of the elements which go 
to make a great play. The interest is diffused through two 
periods of mental tension : the first during the time in 
which Mary is aspiring to secure Philip : the second, while 
she is hoping against hope for the birth of a child. Now, 
the motive of a prolonged mental tension is not a dramatic 
motive. The strain of the situation cannot be portrayed 
vividly and with animation : the drama wastes away in an 

M 



178 ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON 

atmosphere of hope deferred. The motive which, duly 
developed, might have given life and spirit to the play — 
the gradual weariness of Philip for his wife — is slurred over 
within the limit of one short scene. Everything centres 
round the childlessness of the Queen ; and the situation 
is not only unpleasant, but radically undramatic. The 
multiplication of unimportant incidents hinders the develop- 
ment of character; Mary stands out conspicuously; but 
Philip sinks into the shade. Tennyson gives us, indeed, a 
very real Mary : sensuous, obstinate, passionate, suspicious. 
She is traced, with a vigorous touch, through her two great 
periods of longing, — breaking out into a triumphant cry 
when the insurgents are beaten back, and Philip is secured 
to her; sinking into an almost inspired hysteria when she 
first believes that she is to bear a child. For him every 
power is to be propitious : 

* His sceptre shall go forth from Ind to Ind ! 
His sword shall hew the heretic peoples down ! 
His faith shall clothe the world that will be his, 
Like universal air and sunshine ! Open, 
Ye everlasting gates ! The King is here ! — 
My star, my son ! ' 

And again her dying passion leaps into fire, as the face of 
Philip mocks her deathbed from his portrait : 

' This Philip shall not 
Stare in upon me in my haggardness ; 
Old, miserable, diseased, 
Incapable of children. Come thou down. 
Lie there. O God, I have kill'd my Philip ! ' 

The cold, unscrupulous Spaniard was not worth such a 
passion as this. An unsympathetic schemer, with no care 
for her, and no love for the country of his adoption, he 
repels interest from the outset. And during the entire 
drama it is rather his influence that moves in the back- 
ground than his presence that vitalises the story. 

Cranmer has one grand scene, clothed, with a singular 
fidelity, in language almost identical with his recorded 
words. Simon Renard is allowed little prominence : Pole 
has a quiet faith in himself that the distrust of Rome cannot 
destroy : 



QUEEN MARY AND HAROLD 179 

1 I have done my best, and as a faithful son, 
That all day long hath wrought his father's work, 
When back he comes at evening hath the door 
Shut on him by the father whom he loved, 
His early follies cast into his teeth, 
And the poor son turn'd out into the street 
To sleep, to die — I shall die of it, cousin.' 

Elizabeth is colourless. 

The play was produced in a condensed form, the year 
after its publication, when Mr. Irving gave it a trial at the 
Lyceum. It was first played on the 18th of April 1876, 
Miss Bateman (Mrs. Crowe) representing Queen Mary, 
while Mr. Henry Irving appeared as Philip. It was not to 
be expected that it w r ould succeed, and the critical organs 
of the day said their worst for it. The £ra found it ' an 
unsatisfactory play, wanting in stamina, and altogether 
deficient in interest/ Interest of a sort it could not lack : 
for the* dialogue is strong and, on occasion, intensely 
dramatic. It would be impossible, indeed, for Tennyson 
to write anything that was ' altogether deficient in interest.' 
But it did lack motive, and it was innocent, moreover, of 
dramatic construction. Scene followed scene, to lead the 
history forward without promoting the direct progress of the 
play ; the whole drama was a painful tension long drawn 
out. History rarely lends itself to drama. Had he to stand 
or fall by the reputation of ' Richard the Second ' and 
'Henry the Eighth,' Shakespeare himself would fare little 
better than Tennyson with ' Queen Mary/ 

The early years of the dramatic period were undisturbed 
by event. Mrs. Procter relates how Tennyson w r ould drop 
in upon her at Beach House, Freshwater, about eleven in 
the morning, and sit gossiping for an hour or two, at which 
time they would take a walk together. FitzGerald, too, 
gives a delightful description of a visit from the Laureate, 
the first for many years. He found little enough change in 
his friend. ' There seemed not a day's interval between. 
He looked very well and very happy, having with him his 
eldest son, a very nice fellow.' One evening during his 
stay, Tennyson was much distressed by a newspaper 
paragraph, which commented ungraciously on the poet's 
refusal to allow Longfellow to quote from his poems. He 



180 ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON 

sat down on the spot and wrote a letter of explanation. 
' So/ added FitzGerald, ' my house is so far become a 
palace, being the place of a despatch from one poet to 
another, all over that Atlantic' While he was at Wood- 
bridge, Tennyson hinted to his host that he w r as writing 
another drama : but FitzGerald discouraged him. ' He 
should rest on his oars, or ship them for good now, I think;' 
and then he recurs to the 1842 volume, and the old creed. 
His attitude was certainly consistent. 

In the same year Tennyson wrote to Archbishop Trench, 
thanking him genially for his present of a copy of Sacred 
Latin Poetry, for which he expresses extreme admiration ; 
alluding, too, to a Latin chorus of his own, which was 
never published. And in 1876 the names of Browning and 
Tennyson, so many times connected in this little study, are 
united by a warm tribute of affection. Browning, publish- 
ing a selection from his work in two volumes, dedicated it 
to the Laureate in hearty terms : 

'TO 

ALFRED TENNYSON 

In roetry — illustrious and consummate, 
In Friendship — noble and sincere.' 

During the early days of the next year Tennyson took a 
house in town for three months, where Lord Houghton 
found him invariably the same. On March 28th Tennyson 
dined with his old friend to meet Mr. Gladstone, at the 
same hour as of old. ' He will only dine out at seven; and 
all society has to submit to the idiosyncrasy of the poetic 
digestion.' 

In 1877 the new drama appeared; and it is interesting 
to note that it was sympathetically reviewed in The Academy 
by Mr. John Addington Symonds. The same paper had, 
two years before, intrusted the consideration of ' Queen 
Mary ' to Mr. Andrew Lang. The last-named critic had 
noticed in the Tudor tragedy an evidence of 'powers 
unguessed at, and as yet scarcely appreciated ; ' and this 
half-hidden talent had, in the interval, opened into vitality. 
From every possible point of view ' Harold' was a singular 
advance upon ' Queen Mary.' The dialogue was more 



1 82 ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON 

vivid and vigorous ; the characters were sketched with 
keener confidence and with bolder touches ; and the con- 
struction was quite unexpectedly improved. The play no 
longer dallied through long passages of dialogue without 
advancing the story ; every scene, as Mr. Symonds pointed 
out at the time, leads the plot 'by successive stages to the 
final catastrophe.' And the poet had found, too, a theme 
which was full of tragic pathos and dramatic situation : 
a theme which gave opportunity to the psychologist, with- 
out robbing the dramatist of his opportunity. ' Harold ' is, 
in fact, a great drama. And yet, in the strange contrariety 
of events, 'Harold' has never been seen on the stage. 

A review of the incidents will show how powerful is the 
physique of the play. 

The tragedy opens at the palace in London, where Ald- 
wytbj widow of GrifTyth, King of Wales, Gam el, a Nor- 
thumbrian Thane, and a circle of courtiers are watching 
from the window a great comet which hangs over the 
castle. The air is full of superstition, and it is whispered 
that ill is boded by the portent. Then Harold joins them. 
He is sick of the sedentary life, — 'work-wan, flesh-fallen,' — 
he longs to go abroad to hawk and hunt. He has no sym- 
pathy with the fears and apprehensions of the Court : he 
knows the comet is a natural element. He shows his 
character at once — strong, manly, vigorous ; with a sense 
of the obligation of truth and honour. ' Better die than 
lie,' he says. His energy and strength contrast pleasantly 
with the moody, dreamful superstition of Edward the Con- 
fessor, who is next introduced to the scene. The King is 
full of visionary qualms and mysticism : for him ' heaven 
and earth are threads of the same loom/ every earthly sign 
has its counterpart in heavenly import. But his absorption 
into mystery does not prevent him from taking an interest 
in the affairs of the State ; and when Harold begs for leave 
to go to Normandy to hunt and hawk, the King denies him 
with determination, and at last gives but a reluctant per- 
mission. There follows a suggestion of treachery in the 
North, — a suggestion which raises the wrath of Tostig, 
Earl of Northumbria and brother to Harold. He is the 
spoilt child of Godwin ; and, in his pettish outburst, he 



QUEEN MARY AND HAROLD 183 

swears that Harold shall never be king, if he can help it. 
The scene ends with a significant passage between Ald- 
wyth and Gamel. He loves Grififyth's widow, and she 
encourages his hopes ; holding out the condition that he 
shall secure Tostig's downfall. 

The second scene is laid in the garden of the King's 
house near London, where Edith, Edward's ward, is singing 
to the sunset. There follows a passionate love-scene be- 
tween her and Harold. Aldwyth, anxious to separate 
them, has urged Edith to the convent life; but Harold 
silences the suggestion with a kiss : 

' Thou art my nun, thy cloister in mine arms. ' 

Edith is full of fears for Harold, for his visit to Flanders 
and the enmity of Tostig ; but, as she tries to insist on the 
significance of her dreams, Harold once more puts the 
superstition by. It is a fresh, virile love-scene, with a 
strong ending, where Harold glancing in fancy from the 
bells of his hawk, suggests 

' Other bells on earth, which yet are heaven's ; 
Guess what they be. 

Edith. He cannot guess who knows. 

Farewell, my king. 

Harold. Not yet, but then — my queen.' 

As the lovers pass, Aldwyth, like a shadow, slips from the 
thicket. In a jealous outburst she reveals that, as she 
hated GrifTyth, she loves Harold, that she merely plays on 
Gamel to her own end. Suddenly Morcar of Mercia joins 
her. He is eaten up with ambition : and she promises him 
that, if he will flash the report about Northumbria that 
Harold loves her, she will help him to an earldom. Mor- 
car, in joy at the thought that to be an earl is to be a step 
nearer the throne, closes the unholy compact. 

The second act opens on the sea-shore of Ponthieu, 
where Harold and his crew are wrecked, and haled before 
Guy, Count of Ponthieu. The latter sends Harold to 
William of Normandy, whose prisoner we find him in the 
next scene — at Bayeux. William is bent on ruling Eng- 
land, and he sees that the trusty spirit of Harold may help 
him to his desire. In these words he condenses his pro- 
ject : 



1 84 ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON 

i I want his voice in England for the crown, 
I want thy voice with him to bring him round ; 
And being brave he must be subtly cow'd, 
And being truthful wrought upon to swear 
Vows that he dare not break. England our own 
Thro' Harold's help, he shall be my dear friend.' 

This is strong enough, and determined enough ; but the 
weak, inconsistent side of William is shown at the very 
moment of his protestation, in the ease with which he yields 
to the baby demand of the young Rufus. There is no 
stability in this deep-mouthed Norman, who compares but 
feebly with the rough English energy of Harold. He, 
cooped like a lark in a cage, sighs for * Free air ! free field ! ' 
and William promises him his return, on certain conditions. 
Harold shies at the w r ord, but Malet urges him to yield. 
'But what,' says Harold, 'if they be dishonourable?' 
1 Seem to obey him,' answers Malet : and again comes the 
firm, unhesitating answer, ' Better die than lie.' On a 
sudden comes news from England. The North is in 
rebellion \ Tostig has murdered Gamel. 

' My God ! ' cries Harold, { I should be there, 
I '11 hack my way to the sea.' 

But he is faced by another false friend, Wulfnoth, his 
brother. This spiritless little craven urges him to accede 
to William's wish ; but Harold, after a moment's weakness, 
repulses the suggestion. The further persuasion of William 
proves too much, however, and Harold promises, knowing 
that he lies, to advance the Norman's claim to the English 
crown. The moment he is alone he hates himself; and 
tries to argue that he may break his word : 

1 Is " ay " an oath ? is " ay " strong as an oath ? 
Or is it the same sin to break my word 
As break mine oath ? ' 

The doubt is decided for him. The great doors open and 
discover William enthroned. Then Harold, with his hand 
upon the ark which holds the bones of the holy saints of 
Normandy, is forced to give the oath : 

' I swear to help thee to the crown of England.' 



QUEEN MARY AND HAROLD 185 

The word is sworn now, and Harold is miserable : 

' Am I Harold, Harold, son of our great Godwin ? 
I am utter craven.' 

The third act opens in London, where, in the Palace, 
Edward is found lying on a couch sick. His Queen, 
Harold, Aldwyth and Edith are with him. Harold is still 
saddened by the memory of his lie ; the comfort of his 
friends and the absolution of the bishop cannot persuade 
him but that he is forsworn. 

Leofwin argues, 

1 Of all the lies that men have ever lied, 
Thine is the pardonablest.' 

But Harold's answer is without conviction : 

' I think it so, I think I am a fool 
To think it can be otherwise than so.' 

Suddenly Edward, always visionary, wakes from a dream 
which has foretold to him the doom of England. He 
bursts into a frenzy of religious hysteria, at the end of 
which he sinks back into reason, to appoint Harold his 
successor. But he has one condition — Harold must 
remain unwed : he must not marry Edith. It is the old 
superstition that virginity alone is pure, but Harold's 
view is wider. He refuses to comply, and Edward curses 
them. Aldwyth, subtly cunning, wishes Harold had sworn, 
since it would have comforted the King ; but Harold sums 
the situation into three w r ords. ' We so loved,' he says ; 
and the argument is sound. 

Their discussion is ended by one last cry of the King's. 
He wakes from his last vision, his eyes filled with the pro- 
phetic scene of Harold's death : 

* Sanguelac ! Sanguelac ! the arrow ! the arrow ! ' 

With a cry he falls back dead ; and the scene changes to 
the garden, where Harold and Edith plight their eternal 
troth. 

The fourth act moves the action to Northumbria, where 
Harold is with his forces quelling an insurrection. The 
scheme of Morcar has prospered and Aldwyth gains her 
end. For England's sake Harold offers her a loveless 



1 86 ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON 

union, and she is content. i The day is won/ she whispers, 
as the army moves forward to Stamford Bridge. 

After one short scene between Tostig and Harold, in 
which the latter strives to turn his brother's mind, the 
play passes to a banquet after the battle of Stamford 
Bridge, full of the mirth of feasting. But the shadows are 
closing round Harold now. He who scorned superstition 
is becoming nervous and moody at the end. Tostig's 
hand seems to pass across his cup as he raises it to drink : 
his soul is heavy with sorrow for the brother who has fallen. 
And just as the health of Harold and Aldwyth is passing 
round the board, a Thane from Pevensey staggers into the 
hall with the word that William of Normandy has landed. 
So with sudden haste and confusion the banquet is broken 
up, and the act closes on Harold's order to horse. 

At the opening of the last act Harold is discovered 
seated in his tent, with the field of Senlac in the distance. 
The Monk Margot has come to urge him to yield to 
Rome, who has given encouragement to the claim of 
William. But Harold repudiates Rome's authority. 
Enraged, he cries : 

* Back to that juggler, 
Tell him the Saints are nobler than he dreams, 
Tell him that God is nobler than the Saints, 
And tell him we stand arm'd on Senlac Hill, 
And bide the doom of God.' 

Left alone, he falls asleep ; and the ghosts of Edward, 
Wulfnoth, Tostig, and the Norman Saints move across his 
dream to foretell his death. 

1 Sanguelac ! Sanguelac ! the arrow ! the arrow ! ' 

As he springs from his couch, maddened by the vision, 
Edith is with him. Before they can take farewell, Aldwyth 
endeavours to part them ; but Harold is true to the old 
love at last. In a tenderly pathetic scene they say their 
last good-bye, and Harold passes to his death with the 
words : 

* Look, I will bear thy blessing into the battle, 
And front the doom of God.' 

Then the progress of the fight is reported by the bystanders, 



QUEEN MARY AND HAROLD 187 

while their voices of hope and fear mingle with the weird 
chanting of the canons. The battle sways and varies, till 
the last bitter moment. Edith looks across the hill for 
Harold, but the Archbishop calls her to turn her eyes. 
' Sanguelac ! Sanguelac ! the arrow, the arrow ! away ! ' 

The tragedy closes at night on the field of the dead. 
Edith and Aldwyth have come to look for Harold's body, 
and Edith is maddened now. She raves incoherently of 
her love and marriage, and desperately draws the ring from 
the finger of the dead, to wed herself to him : 

' And thou, — 
Thy wife am I for ever and evermore.' 

So she dies with him ; and William, who even by his foe's 
dead body, can find no good word to say of him, turns to 
Aldwyth and promises her a kindly treatment. She, the 
crafty schemer, is left alone : all her plans have miscarried, 
all her hopes are belied. It is too heavy for her : 
* My punishment is more than I can bear.' 

It is impossible to show in a bare analysis how com- 
pletely ' Harold ' satisfies the requisites of tragedy ; but 
this rapid glance will prove that every scene is intimately 
connected with the theme, the gradual rise and fall of the 
fortunes of ' Harold.' Until his marriage with Aldwyth 
his star is rising, from that point it begins a rapid and fatal 
decline. The turning-point in his life, however, is the 
moment of his first lie. From that time he has lost his 
trust in himself, and begins to weaken into superstition. 
Had he been true to himself, false sentiment had never 
made him false to Edith. Before that, all his life is built 
of truth and honesty : 

1 In mine earldom 
A man may hang gold bracelets on a bush, 
And leave them for a year, and coming back 
Find them again.' 

And again the hot English blood boils up within him, when 
William tortures a subject who had abused his rule : 

' In mine own land I should have scorn'd the man, 
Or lash'd his rascal back, and let him go.' 



1 88 ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON 

The wide-minded spirit of chivalry chafes, too, at the 
thousand little exigencies of doctrine. He is above priest- 
craft : 

' Oh God ! I cannot help it, but at times 
They seem to me too narrow, all the faiths 
Of this grown world of ours, whose baby eye 
Saw them sufficient.' 

This is Harold : open, chivalrous, wide-minded, yielding 
but once to temptation, and ruined for life by a lie. From 
that moment petty fears and false sentiments get hold of 
him ; only at the last he triumphs. Before he goes out to 
die. he recognises the faithfulness and the desert of Edith. 
And in their death they are not divided. 

Aldwyth, cunning and ambitious, with one redeeming 
feature — her passion for Harold, — serves as the evil influence 
of the drama. She is not inhumanly evil : it is only in her 
treatment of Edith that she becomes hateful. And even 
there, her love for her dead king covers, or at any rate 
excuses, a multitude of abuses, 

Edith is saved from the position of a merely tender, 
uninfluential girl by the final stress of her love. The wild 
woman fighting for the body of Harold is a strange develop- 
ment of the simple, trustful maid, singing of love and hope 
in the garden. Her character is perhaps the most dramatic 
in the play ; she changes during its course from girlhood to 
womanhood, from meekness to strength. 

William of Normandy has no redeeming feature. He 
is brutal and unscrupulous, cloaking his treachery with an 
assumption of friendship; he is unchivalrous, even to the 
insult of his foe's dead body. In arousing our sympathy for 
Harold, Tennyson is careful to excite our contempt for his 
successor. 

These four characters carry the drama between them. 
Tostig and Wulfnoth have some importance, but their 
characters are not subtle. Tostig is the spoiled boy grown 
man, wayward and uncertain ; selfish,— even to an aspira- 
tion towards the kingdom. Wulfnoth is a coward pure and 
simple, without life or spirit. 

The play is as rich in character as in action. It is to be 
hoped that it may yet be seen upon the London stage. 



CHAPTER XI 

THE FALCON AND THE CUP 

The publication of ' Harold' was followed by two years of 
comparative silence. During 1877 and 1878 Tennyson's 
work was confined to contributions to The Nineteenth 
Century, the first number of which, edited by Mr. J. T. 
Knowles, the friend upon whose plans Aldworth was built, 
appeared in March 1877. It b° re as a prelude the 
Laureate's introductory sonnet, and during the same year 
the new review was enriched by the sonnets ' Montenegro ' 
and 'To Victor Hugo,' and the lines translated from the 
eighteenth Iliad, 'Achilles over the Trench.' But the 
thirteenth number (March 1878) contained a far more 
notable poem, ' Sir Richard Grenville : a Ballad of the 
Fleet,' subsequently renamed 'The Revenge.' This peom 
stands in a class alone, side by side with 'The Charge of 
the Light Brigade,' 'The Voyage of Maeldune,' 'The Defence 
of Lucknow,' and 'The Charge of the Heavy Brigade.' 
These ^\ 7 t pieces bear witness to us of a Tennyson too 
little realised, a man with the soul of action and 'the heart 
of fire.' To read them seems to give reason to FitzGerald's 
early vision of the poet, standing, by Henry Hallam's 
shoulder, to the guns on the Martello Tower. None of 
them is so breathlessly violent, so eager, so manfully English 
as 'The Revenge,' which owes certain of its details to Sir 
Walter Raleigh's 'Report of the Truth of the Fight about 
the Isles of the Azores this last summer betwixt The 
Revenge and an Armada of the King of Spain.' It sounds 
like a war-song on one of Kingsley's themes, set to the 
roaring music of the blast of that ' chivalrous and cheery 
horn ' which stirs the spirit of Mr. Andrew Lang. It has 
no less vigour than ' Herve Riel,' over which, perhaps, it 
triumphs by a clearer enunciation. There is nothing more 
virile in literature than Sir Richard Grenville's cry to death : 

189 



190 ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON 

' We have fought such a fight for a day and a night 
As may never be fought again ! 
We have won great glory, my men ! 
And a day less or more 
At sea or ashore, 
We die — does it matter when? 

Sink me the ship, Master Gunner, sink her, split her in twain ! 
Fall into the hands of God, not into the hands of Spain ! ' 



' Eh ! he has got the grip of it ! ' cried Carlyle. It is the 
grip that was meant to write the war-songs of a nation ; and 
we cannot but regret that Tennyson has sung so little to 
this strain. 

A year later, in April 1879, he recaptured the breathless 
spirit of adventure in another contribution to The Nineteenth 
Century. 'The Defence of Lucknow' is eager, nervous, 
and rapid. The excitement never dies down, the strain of 
energy holds to the last line. Browning, it is said, was 
once asked whether he did not consider that ' The Revenge ' 
owed something of its inspiration to his own ' Herve Riel/ 
but he set the suggestion aside at once. ' Tennyson's in- 
spiration,' he said, ' is his own.' Still the poems are, as it 
were, twin brothers, alike in form and disposition. 

In the spring of 1879, on the 25th of April, Charles 
Tennyson Turner died at Cheltenham. ' I was writing 
only yesterday,' wrote FitzGerald on the 18th of May, 'to 
persuade Spedding to insist on Macmillan publishing a 
complete edition of Charles's sonnets : graceful, tender, 
beautiful, and quite original little things.' The collection 
appeared in the following year, — published, however, by 
Mr. Kegan Paul. It was introduced by Spedding, and 
prefaced by the Laureate's poem, 'At Midnight, June 30, 
1879,' to which reference has already been made. The 
little volume is a delightful union of the old and the young 
generation. It contains Samuel Taylor Coleridge's com- 
ments, written by him in his own earlier copy of the 
sonnets, and the whole is edited by the Laureate's son, 
Mr. Hallam Tennyson. Several copies of the earlier 
volume claim to be Coleridge's original, but errors in 
transcription put two, at least, out of court. The copy in 
the British Museum was long believed to be the genuine 



THE FALCON AND THE CUP 191 

one ; but Mr. J. Dykes Campbell has proved the notes to 
be written in another hand than Coleridge's. 

Charles Tennyson's life was a very peaceful one, centred 
in the interest of his parish at Grasby. There he left be- 
hind him an affectionate regard, and other permanent 
records of his care. He not only rebuilt the vicarage, but 
restored the church and schools. He published three 
volumes of poems — 'Sonnets and Fugitive Pieces' in 1830, 
'Sonnets' in 1864, and 'Sonnets, Lyrics, and Translations' 
in 1873. His wife survived him but a single month. 

During the present year (1879), Alfred Tennyson's muse 
was not unfruitful. ' The Lover's Tale,' treated earlier in 
this study, was now first published in its complete form, 
making a thin volume of ninety-five pages. American 
piracy, reproducing the poem with innumerable errors, in- 
duced Tennyson to print it in a correct and final shape. 
This was merely a revival : the poet's heart of hearts was 
still absorbed in drama. ' Becket ' was already in con- 
templation \ and towards the end of the year another and 
much slighter piece was introduced to the public. On 
December 18, 1879, Messrs. Hare and Kendal produced 
'The Falcon' at the St. James's Theatre. 

'The Falcon ' is by far the least ambitious of Tennyson's 
plays ; it is, indeed, a mere lever de rideau. The argument 
is borrowed from Boccaccio, where it serves as the ninth 
novel of the fifth day of the ' Decameron/ the story told 
by Dioneo. The Count Federigo degli Alberighi, an im- 
poverished nobleman, is in love with a wealthy and beauti- 
ful widow, the Lady Giovanna. He loved her before her 
first marriage, and has now spent all his resources in the 
purchase of a diamond necklace as a gift for her. But 
she has a rival, — his favourite falcon. The Count has a 
strange affection for this bird, to which he prattles by the 
hour of love and life. Sometimes he almost feels that the 
bird is as dear to him as his mistress. Now, the Lady 
Giovanna's son is sick to death, and in his moody melan- 
choly he yearns for the Count's falcon. It seems as if this 
toy alone could turn the course of his ill-health. So the 
Lady Giovanna calls upon the Count, at the luncheon 
hour, to beg the falcon of him. The scanty provision in 



192 ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON 

the larder is insufficient for the meal; and the Count 
secretly orders his foster-brother, Filippo, to kill the falcon 
and have it cooked for Giovanna. While the meal is in 
preparation, the Count sings, and reminds Giovanna of the 
earlier years of their love. But, when the lunch is spread, 
the lady cannot eat. She is filled with anxiety for her 
request ; and when she proffers it, she learns that her lover 
has striven so hard to entertain her that he has killed his 
favourite for her sake. Then her love holds back no 
longer, and their happiness is secure. 

There are but four characters in the piece — Elizabetta 
the Count's nurse, Filippo his foster-brother, an echo of 
the Shakespearian clown, and the Count and Lady them- 
selves. The length of the piece (it could scarcely play for 
more than an hour) prevents any delicate sketch of char- 
acter : nor is such analysis demanded in so slight an 
essay. But where there is little character there must be 
action and motive. Action, as a survey of the argument 
will show, there is practically none : and the motive is in- 
sufficient. As a story to while away an afternoon, the 
tale has a charm and a romantic interest : but these pale 
of necessity when the argument is set out in dramatic form. 
Then the story must depend on motive, and on motive 
alone. Now, the interest and attraction of an extinct 
form of field-sport is not a sufficient groundwork for drama. 
The Count's affection for his favourite falcon, intelligible 
enough to the ladies of Florence, has not depth and 
strength enough to convince an English audience. The 
sacrifice would be affecting as an incident ; it is not 
strong enough to form the main motive of a play. ' The 
Falcon ' was respectfully and kindly received, but there 
was no enthusiasm. The piece was perfectly acted, with a 
delicate taste and a full appreciation of the beauty of the 
dialogue, and its success was chiefly due to its performance. 
The customary call of compliment for the author was 
answered by Mr. Hare, who informed the audience that 
Mr. Alfred Tennyson was not present, but that his son, Mr. 
Hallam Tennyson, would convey to his father their kindly 
appreciation of his play. But ' The Falcon's ' wings were not 
broad enough nor strong enough to carry it into success. 



THE FALCON AND THE CUP 193 

The next year, however, saw the publication of a volume 
which was to succeed where 'The Falcon' failed. The 
book of ' Ballads/ issued in 1880, contains between cover 
and cover the most dramatic of all Tennyson's poems. 
The monologue, first suggested in 'St. Simeon Stylites,' is 
brought to perfection in 'The First Quarrel,' 'Rizpah,' 
'Sir John Oldcastle, Lord Cobham,' and 'Columbus.' 
The poems in dialect have no better examples than ' The 
Northern Cobbler' and 'The Village Wife.' 'The Re- 
venge,' ' The Defence of Lucknow,' and the ' Voyage of 
Maeldune ' are among the finest, most spirited poems of 
action in the language. ' The Sisters ' and ' In the 
Children's Hospital' stand midway between the idyll and 
the dramatic monologue, catching some of the most 
characteristic traits of either form. ' De Profundis,' which 
appeared first in The Nineteenth Century for May 1880, 
stands side by side with ' The Higher Pantheism,' as a 
calm, philosophical declaration of faith in the goodness 
of a God who does all things well. The other contents of 
the volume were the prefatory sonnet to The Nineteenth 
Century, the sonnets to W. H. Brookfield, Montenegro, 
and to Victor Hugo, the translations ' The Battle of Brun- 
anburgh' and 'Achilles over the Trench,' the poem 'To 
the Princess Frederica of Hanover on her Marriage,' the 
lines for Sir John Franklin's cenotaph, and 'To Dante.' 
There was also a dedicatory prelude to his grandson : 

' Golden-hair'd Ally, whose name is one with mine.' 

The ' Ballads ' are particularly interesting in their rela- 
tion to the rest of Tennyson's work, and for their place in 
the very centre of the dramatic period. They represent, 
as it were, a moulding of the old material into more 
dramatic form, — the immediate result of the concentration 
of the poet's mind upon drama. He turns to the old 
subjects and the old scenes ; but, almost unconsciously, he 
treats them in a new spirit. His touch becomes more 
vivid, and less personal ; his characters speak with their 
own tongues, and not with the voice of the poet. 'The 
First Quarrel ' is an idyll of the hearth inspired with life. 
Nelly and Harry are lifelike in the very respect in which 

N 



194 ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON 

Annie and Philip, in * Enoch Arden,' are idealised. They 
speak the rough, genuine language of the fisher-folk. 

' " I had sooner be cursed than kiss'd," ' 

she says. And again : 

* You were keeping with her, 
When I was loving you all along, an' the same as before.' 

Then hear Annie speak : Annie, with the same bringing-up, 
the same surroundings : 

1 If Enoch comes — but Enoch will not come — 
Yet wait a year, a year is not so long : 
Surely I shall be wiser in a year : 
O wait a little ! ' 

The one treatment is dramatic, the other idyllic. 

' Rizpah ' is even more dramatic. A mother, whose boy 
has been hung for robbing the mail, is dying : and on her 
deathbed she tells, with all the horror of circumstance, how 
she stole his bones and gave them Christian burial under 
the churchyard wall. And now she is going to her boy — 
she cares not whither : 

' Election, Election and Reprobation— it 's all very well. 
But I go to-night to my boy, and I shall not find him in Hell. 
And if he be lost — but to save my soul, that is all your desire : 
Do you think that I care for my soul if my boy be gone to the fire? 
I have been with God in the dark — go, go, you may leave me 

alone — 
You never have borne a child — you are just as hard as a stone.' 

'The Northern Cobbler,' the story of the salvation of a 
drunkard, and ' The Village Wife,' the garrulous gossip of 
an old countrywoman — both written in dialect, — ' Sir John 
Oldcastle ' and ' Columbus/ are all of the very essence of 
dramatic monologue. 'The Voyage of Maeldune' is 
written in a combination of two styles. There is a wealth 
of description in the account of the different isles at which 
the wanderers touch, which suggests the colour of ' The 
Lotos Eaters' and 'The Voyage.' On the other hand, 
there is a rapid movement, as of the plunging of the vessel 
through the foam, which hurries the poem on from picture 
to picture : 



THE FALCON AND THE CUP 195 

i And we roll'd upon capes of crocus and vaunted our kith and our kin, 
And we w T allow'd in beds of lilies, and chanted the triumph of Finn, 
Till each like a golden image was pollen'd from head to feet, 
And each was as dry as a cricket, with a thirst in the middle-day 

heat. 
Blossom and blossom, and promise of blossom, but never a fruit ! 
And we hated the Flowering Isle, as we hated the isle that was 

mute, 
And we tore up the flowers by the million and flung them in bight 

and bay, 
And we left but a naked rock, and in anger w T e sail'd away.' 

The same wild excitement, now holding its breath in hope 
and fear, overwhelms the spirit of 'The Defence of Luck- 
now.' The shadow of death hangs over the poem, as we 
listen to the beating of men's hearts failing them for fear : 

' Quiet, ah ! quiet — wait till the point of the pickaxe be thro' ! 
Click with the pick, coming nearer and nearer again than before — 
Now let it speak, and you fire, and the dark pioneer is no more ; 
And ever upon the topmost roof our banner of England blew.' 

This is the true spirit of drama, keen, eager, with a sense 
of action and a grasp of situation. There is nothing like 
this in Tennyson's plays, — not even in ' Harold.' 

It is, perhaps, scarcely worth mentioning, but the fact 
remains that, some years after the appearance of 'Columbus,' 
a pamphlet was printed claiming to trace a connection be- 
tween the Laureate's poem and a piece of verse by an 
obscure writer called ' Columbus at Seville.' The attempt, 
in itself ignoble, was conducted in a spirit which frees it 
from the necessity of serious consideration ; its only in- 
terest lies in its exposure of the fallacy and worthlessness 
of the average accusation of plagiarism. No cause is easier 
to argue : none is less deserving of argument. 

In the year of the 'Ballads' (1880), in February, two 
child songs, 'The City Child' and 'Minnie and Winnie,' 
appeared in an American periodical, St. Nicholas. These 
have since been reprinted in Tennyson's collected works. 
They are melodious nursery-rhymes : a singular, contrast 
to the work which was occupying Tennyson's inclination 
at the moment. For at that time he was finishing 'The 
Cup.' 

Towards the end of the year Mr. Irving announced the 



196 



ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON 



production of Tennyson's new play at the Lyceum ; and 
on Monday, January 3, 188 1, it was presented to one of 
the most distinguished audiences which were ever gathered 
into a theatre for a first night. Report had been busy with 
the play beforehand, and the critical had prophesied failure. 
Neither ' Queen Mary ' nor ' The Falcon ' had succeeded ; 
and Mr. Irving was considered to have shown some 
temerity in venturing on another of the Laureate's dramas. 
But his boldness was justified. 'The Cup ' was a genuine 
success. The play was staged with liberal magnificence, 
and acted with sympathy and power. Everything that art 
and artifice could do to secure success was done, and the 
result belied the fears which even Tennyson's best friends 
had been unable to put aside altogether. The following 
was the original cast of 





THE CUP 






GALATIANS 




Synorix, 




Mr. Irving. 


Sinnatus, 


. . 


Mr. Terriss. 


Attendant, 


. 


. Mr. Harwood. 


Boy, . 


. 


Miss Brown. 


Maid, . 




Miss Pauncefort. 


Can una, 


ROMANS 


Miss Ellen Terry 


Antonins, 


. 


Mr. Tyars. 


Publins, 


, . . 


Mr. Hudson. 


Nobleman, 


■ . 


Mr. Matthison. 


Herald, 


• 


Mr. Archer. 



The story of the tragedy, which is borrowed from Plutarch's 
De Mulierum Virtutibus, and had already been used by 
Montanelli, may be told in a few words. Sinnatus, tetrarch 
of Galatia, is suspected of infidelity to the Roman rule. 
Antonius, a Roman general, is sent to investigate his honour, 
and is accompanied on the quest by Synorix, ex-tetrarch of 
the same province. Three years before, when he held the 
tetrarchy, Synorix had conceived a passion for a Galatian 
girl, Camma, who has since married Sinnatus. He is a 
crude voluptuary, who has never yet found a woman he 
could not 'force or wheedle to his will,' and he spies oppor- 



THE FALCON AND THE CUP 197 

tunity, in the present case, for winning from Camma all he 
wishes. As a first claim on her attention he sends her a 
golden cup, embossed with the figure of Artemis, and then, 
by a lucky chance, he falls in -with Sinnatus and his com- 
panions hunting, and joins them. At the end of the day's 
sport, Sinnatus invites Synorix to his house ; and the traitor 
plays on Camma's wifely fear by swearing that Antonius 
knows her husband to be false to Rome, and will have him 
tortured, and, perhaps, killed in punishment. He suggests 
that Camma shall, on the following morning, repair to the 
camp, and beg Antonius for mercy for her husband ; and, 
as their conversation ends, the mob, without learning who 
Synorix is, begin to clamour for his blood. Sinnatus, how- 
ever, helps him to escape ; and at the appointed hour next 
day Camma comes to the camp. Instead of Antonius she 
finds Synorix ; and, drawing her dagger against him, is 
disarmed. Then Sinnatus rushes to the rescue, and Synorix 
stabs him with Camma's dagger. She flies to the temple 
of Artemis for safety. 

In the second act she is found installed priestess of the 
temple, and Synorix, who has now been appointed Prince 
of Galatia, is still beseeching her with entreaties for her 
hand. At last she accepts him, and crowns herself Queen 
of Galatia. The marriage rites are to be solemnised in the 
temple, and Antonius comes with Synorix to the festival. 
Then Camma asks Antonius what punishment he would 
have inflicted on Sinnatus had he been found untrue to 
Rome. The general hints at a reprimand ; and Camma 
learns how treacherously Synorix has deceived her. Still 
she carries on the semblance of her marriage. Poisoning 
the libation in the cup Synorix had given her, she hands it 
him, and drinks of it herself; and she and her would-be 
betrayer die together. 

'The Cup' is a powerful little tragedy, rich in action, 
condensed into a singularly brief space. The story is 
actually concerned with but four characters, and of these, 
three only are intimately connected with the interest. Each 
of the three is endowed with vitality and strength. Camma 
is especially distinct and human. Her soul is bound up in 
her love for her husband. After the revelations of Synorix 



1 98 ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON 

and his hint of the danger in which Sinnatus is involved, 

she sinks from the strain of the moment into a tender 

remembrance of the past. Standing at the window, she 

sees afar off the vine-bower where Sinnatus told her of 

his love. 

' You kiss'd me there 
For the first time. Sinnatus kiss me now.' 

This is pure womanly. The sense of danger draws him 
nearer to her : she needs the assurance of his presence in 
the feeling of his arms about her and his lips to hers. And 
then she sets sentiment aside, and goes out to danger in 
the hope of saving him. Such love as this cannot die with 
his death. It nerves her to something stronger, when his 
help is taken from her. For the satisfaction of revenge she 
endures the indignation of her fellow-priestess, Phoebe, at 
the prospect of her marriage to Synorix. In the keenness 
of the moment she seems to throw modesty aside, as she 
throws away her fear. Phoebe reminds her of the shyness 
with which she faced her first marriage ; and she replies — 

' I have no fears at this my second marriage. 
See here — I stretch my hand out — hold it there. 
How steady it is ! ' 

She endures it all, that she may pass to Sinnatus on the 
other side of death, and tell him that he is avenged : 

' Row to the blessed Isles ! the blessed Isles ! — 
Sinnatus ! . . . 

There — league on league of ever-shining shore 
Beneath an ever-rising sun — I see him — 
Camma, Camma ! Sinnatus, Sinnatus ! ' 

The husband, for whom she ventures all things, appears, 
in the short while he is before us, as a brave, chivalrous 
soldier. He saves the life of Synorix, to whom Galatia 
owed nothing but revenge, and in return he pays for his 
clemency with his life. For the rest, he is a keen hunter 
and a hot-blooded antagonist. 

Synorix is a libertine : selfish, as is the wont of his kind : 
sacrificing every honourable scruple to the satisfaction of 
his lust. He is false even to Rome ; he lies to Camma of 



THE FALCON AND THE CUP 199 

Rome's intention in order to frighten her into compliance 
with his will. At the end, even, he is false to himself. 

1 " Tell the Senate !" 

he says, 

11 1 have been most true to Rome — would have been true 
To her— if— if " ' 

Synorix, false at the moment of his death to the country 
which he served, could never have been true to a woman. 

But the strength and vigour of ' The Cup ' does not 
consist merely in the portraiture of this vivid trio of 
characters ; the tragedy has especial merit in the swift, 
eager sequence of its incidents. It has sufficient motive 
to have excused its prolongation to twice its present length ; 
but its concise, nervous movement lends it a strength which 
an elaboration of detail would inevitably weaken. In 
singular contrast to ' Queen Mary,' it has not a scene or a 
passage of dialogue which could be omitted without harm 
to the whole ; and the technical stage-craft is an advance 
upon the advance of ' Harold.' The scene between Camma, 
Synorix, and Sinnatus is a piece of breathless rapidity which 
is full of dramatic energy, and the act-drop falls upon a 
strong and impressive situation. The dialogue is more 
direct and incisive than in the earlier dramas \ speech cuts 
into speech with that sharp stroke which carries the play 
along with it. And during the last act the gradual atmo- 
sphere of tragedy gathers round the characters with a 
sombre progress which is the evidence of true genius in 
the writer. The strange, uncomfortable words of suggestion 
which Camma throws out from time to time form themselves 
by degrees into a sense of coming horror. The thunder 
rolls above the marriage hymn, as though Artemis were 
answering Camma from the cloud. And at the altar of the 
goddess, whose sanctuary he wished to violate, Synorix 
pays the penalty of his lust. ' The Cup ' is a tragedy in 
little ; but it is a tragedy that may well stand as an example 
of the most vivid dramatic literature which any English 
author has produced during the last quarter of a century. 

Mr. William Archer, who gives ' The Cup ' a very full 
consideration in his interesting volume English Dramatists 



200 ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON 

of To-day, has two main faults to find with it. He com- 
plains, in the first place, that the play should not open till 
after the death of Sinnatus ; and, in the second place, he 
insists that, as Synorix kills Sinnatus in self-defence, Camilla's 
revenge is robbed of half its justification. An affection for 
Montanelli's play has, perhaps, led the critic a little further 
than his calmer judgment would follow. For to say that 
the play should begin with Camma's revenge is merely to 
argue that the story should be told from a different stand- 
point. Tennyson's object is to show the course of Synorix's 
unholy love, which is quite willing to satisfy itself without 
bloodshed. Were the story to begin after the death of 
Sinnatus, the dramatic exposition of this love would, 
perhaps, suffer in justification from the fact that Synorix 
killed her husband in defending his own life. But, as 
Tennyson's play stands, Camma's thirst for revenge is fully 
justified by the double wrong that Synorix has done her. 
He has sought to seduce her, and, to gain his end, had lied 
to her as to Rome's intention. Had that lie remained 
untold, she would never have gone to Antonius, and so 
led her husband to his death. It is difficult to imagine a 
stronger motive for revenge than that which animates the 
Camma of 'The Cup.' Not only has her husband fallen 
by the hand of Synorix, but the circumstances of his death 
have been rendered possible by an unholy love for herself. 
Without that love, there had been no lie ; without the lie, 
Sinnatus would never have run into danger. 

Another fault which Mr. Archer finds with ' The Cup ' is 
more reasonable : he complains of the rapidity of the 
action. He argues that the true psychological motive, 
the growth of Camma's thirst for revenge, and the religious 
enthusiasm which justifies it, are slurred over in the 
Laureate's version of the story. There is truth in this : 
1 The Cup,' as we said before, might be prolonged to twice 
its length without loss. But it was more than probable 
that, in Tennyson's hands, the psychological motive, once 
insisted upon, would have increased in importance until it 
overbalanced the action of the play. A second act, which 
should trace Camma's revenge in its growth, would have 
lent itself to that ' tendency without drama' which Mr. 



THE FALCON AND THE CUP 201 

Archer has always been the first to condemn. The vivid, 
eager movement of the plot would have been stayed : the 
interest w r ould inevitably have hung fire. Doubtless Tenny- 
son foresaw this, and hurried the action forward to its tragic 
close. As it now stands, 'The Cup' is unimpeded by 
psychology : it is a drama, not a study. And in freeing 
himself from the temptation to be analytic, Tennyson has 
broken a custom which, both before and after 'The Cup/ 
led him to dramatic failure. To treat a subject in a different 
spirit is not necessarily to treat it better. 'What is writ 
is writ ; ' and it is written with a strength and energy 
which the popular dramatists of the day may well envy the 
Laureate. 



CHAPTER XII 

THE PROMISE OF ¥^FAND BECKET 

At the moment when the Lyceum Theatre was attracting 
London to its sumptuous version of ' The Cup/ another of 
the Laureate's old friends left him. In 1881 James Spedding 
died. The Cambridge circle was gradually narrowing : 
Arthur Hallam, Charles Tennyson, and Frederick Denison 
Maurice were gone : FitzGerald survived Spedding for no 
more than three years. The breaking up of the old order filled 
those who were left with saddened memories. FitzGerald's 
letters during 1881 contain more than one reference to 
the loss of Spedding. He recalls gratefully the visit of 
Tennyson and himself to the Speddings in 1835, when the 
poet was busy upon ' Morte d'Arthur,' and the l daffodils 
were out in a field before the house.' He adds with a 
yearning for sympathy : ' Does Alfred Tennyson remember 
them ? ' 

As the circle narrows, those who are left draw closer to 
one another. 

Meanwhile the dramatic movement still carried Tennyson 
with it. In November 1881 he printed in The Nineteenth 
Century another vivid monologue, ' Despair,' which in 
intensity and horror is scarcely to be rivalled. It was to 
be ridiculed, however. A month later Mr. Swinburne 
published in The Fortnightly Review a clever, if somewhat 
savage, travesty, * Disgust,' in which the circumstances and 
sentiment of Tennyson's story were burlesqued into a coarse 
chirurgical operation. But Mr. Swinburne's genuine ad- 
miration for Tennyson's work prevented his parodies from 
becoming gross : and, in the year preceding ' Disgust,' he 
had travestied him with genuine felicity. 'The Hepta- 
logia : or the Seven against Sense,' imitations of the char- 
acteristic manner and matter of the seven leading poets of 

the day, was published in 1880 anonymously; but its 

202 



THE PROMISE OF MA Y AND BECKET 203 

authorship was immediately ascribed to Mr. Swinburne, 
who actually parodies himself in a poem that is a little too 
clearly a caricature. The style of Robert Browning is 
much more fortunately caught, and Mrs. Browning is skil- 
fully echoed in ' The Poet and the Woodlouse.' The 
travesty of Tennyson is entitled, ' The Higher Pantheism 
in a Nutshell : ' it is keen, but admirable. 

' God, whom we see not, is ; and God, who is not, we see ; 
Fiddle, we know, is diddle ; and diddle, we take it, is dee.' 

There is, perhaps, but one parody of Tennyson's manner 
which can stand on an equality with 'The Higher Pan- 
theism in a Nutshell/ and this rival is seven years older. 
In 1873 General Hamley, to whom 'The Charge of the 
Heavy Brigade' is dedicated, contributed to Blackwood's 
Magazine ' Sir Tray : an Arthurian Legend,' as excellent 
a piece of fooling as ever was penned. It tells, with 
strangely Tennysonian touch, the story of Mother Hubbard 
and her dog — a favourite groundwork for parody. Mother 
Hubbard's return from the baker's is recounted with graphic 
solemnity. Tray lies dead : 

' The carcase moved 
All over wooden like a piece of wood.' 

And again, could anything be more Tennysonian than the 
following version of the lines, 

1 She went to the hatter's to get her a hat, 
And when she came back he was feeding the cat ' ? 

This is how General Hamley describes the scene : 

* Then up she rose, and to the Hatter's went, — 
" Hat me," quoth she, " your very newest hat." 
And so they hatted her, and she return'd, 
Home thro' the darksome wold, and raised the latch, 
And mark'd, full lighted by the ingle-glow, 
Sir Tray, with spoon in hand, and cat on knee, 
Spattering the mess about the chaps of Puss.' 

Such travesty has root in a very real appreciation of the 
characteristics of the original. 

But to return to ' Despair.' Tennyson's dramatic poems 
have often proved a stumbling-block to the less astute of 



204 ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON 

his readers, and there were many people who found 
1 Despair ' unquieting. The treatment of atheism was con- 
sidered dangerous, if not positively immoral. An eminent 
socialist discussed the poem in a controversial tract, and 
a Mr. Thomas Walker delivered a lecture on its religious 
significance. In a few pregnant words he represented the 
attitude of the public to the poem. 

1 Culture/ he said, ' could no more accept than disown 
it, and sulked. Society was vexed that its conventional 
decorum had been set at nought, and muttered " indiscre- 
tion " and "scandal." The religious world groaned as if 
under a benumbing torpedo shock. And had the far- 
seeing poet braved so much hostility, and provoked all 
this dislike for nothing ? For an enterprise so perilous was 
there not a reason and a compensation ? ' 

It was the old story : the public treated a dramatic utter- 
ance as an expression of the poet's own sentiment ; it began 
to fear that the Tennyson of ' In Memoriam ' had gone 
down before the flowing tide of disbelief. The fear seems 
incredible, but it is none the less a matter of history. 

1 Despair' has a special interest as the forerunner of 
'The Promise of May.' The problem of the struggle of 
doubt and faith had at intervals suggested itself to Tenny- 
son : it found voice in ' In Memoriam,' in ' The Higher 
Pantheism,' in 'Two Voices.' It was now, in Tennyson's 
most dramatic period, to issue in a dramatic exposition — 
to be represented, not subjectively, but objectively. And 
the representation in the new form was to draw the lesson 
of the old, the doctrine of the necessity and immortality of 
Faith, without which the man is dead to all the virtues and 
aspirations of life. Only the least intellectual student could 
find a note of doubt in Tennyson. 

But there are always those who misunderstand : and 
another anecdote of this period is worth retelling in the 
present connection. It is a fitting companion to the debate 
over ' Despair,' and the story of the Eyre rebellion. In 
March 1882, at a concert at St. James's Hall, Mr, Santley 
sang * Hands all round,' to a setting by Mrs. Tennyson. 
It will be remembered that the song has a hearty refrain : 
* To this great cause of Freedom, drink, my friends. ' 



THE PROMISE OF MA Y AND BECKET 205 

and, naturally, in the musical version, the word ' Drink ' 
was repeated to a stirring melody. The Committee of 
Good Templars were up in arms at once, and the poet 
received a letter of expostulation for his encouragement of 
drunkenness ! Of a certain class and their conscientious- 
ness there is no end. 

It was not so that the costermonger in Covent Garden 
regarded the poet ! The story is no new one, but it has 
its interest here. ' You are Mr. Tennyson, 7 said the man. 
1 Look here, sir, I Ve been drunk six days out of seven ; 
but, if you '11 shake hands with me, I 'm damned if 1 11 
ever be drunk again. 3 

During the early months of 1882 Tennyson was occupied 
upon another drama, which, after some delay, was pro- 
duced on November n, 1882. Mrs. Bernard Beere, the 
one tragic actress of the moment, had taken the Globe 
Theatre for a spell of management, and she was attracted 
by the Laureate's new play. The financial success of ' The 
Cup ' stood also as a precedent of good fortune, and with 
the following cast she reopened the theatre with 

THE PROMISE OF MAY 



Farmer Dob son, 








. Mr. Charles Kellv. 


Philip Edgar, 








. Mr. Hermann Vezin. 


Farmer Steer, 








Mr. H. Cameron. 


Mr. Wilson, 








Mr. E. T. March. 


fanes, 








Mr. H. Halley. 


Dan Smith, 








Mr. C. Mbdwin. 


Higgins, . 








Mr. A. Philips. 


Jackson, . 








Mr. G. Stevens. 


Allen, 








Mr. H. E. Russell. 


Dora Steer, 








Mrs. Bernard Beere. 


Eva Steer. 








Miss Emmeline Ormsby 


Sally, . 








Miss Alexes Leighton. 


A/illy, . 








Miss Maggie Hunt. 



The rumour of the drama had preceded it, and a dis- 
tinguished and expectant audience filled the theatre on the 
first night. It was known that the play was to touch on 
agnosticism, but, though some of the spectators may have 
come ready to disapprove any atheistic sentiment, there 
was no suggestion of any united attempt to condemn the 



206 ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON 

drama unheard. On the contrary, its opening passages 
were delivered into an atmosphere of respectful and eager 
attention. The new manager had done all she could to 
secure success. The pastoral scenery was artistically 
painted ; the company was a strong one. The programme 
is a delicate little souvenir. On a buff-card, folded, the 
song, ' O joy for the Promise of May ! ' is printed on either 
side of the cast of characters. The front cover bears a 
pink may-tree in full bloom with golden leaves ; another 
may-tree adorns the back. Care and thought had been 
bestowed upon every detail of the production. But before 
the end of the first act the fate of the play was decided. 
The first murmurs of disapproval grew into loud and 
continued derision, and the principal actor could with 
difficulty carry his part to an end. When the curtain fell, 
'The Promise of May' was irretrievably ruined. 

The failure of the play has been traced to two main 
motives of irritation, which are supposed to have wrought 
the audience to the pitch at which endurance becomes 
impossible. On the one hand, it has been pointed out 
that the hero is a sensual agnostic, whose very portrayal on 
the stage was provocation enough for an outburst of protest. 
And, on the other hand, it is agreed that the one motive, 
and the one situation, the outcome of that motive, which 
are the vertebrae of the play, are so unpalatable in tone and 
sentiment as to alienate the interest and sympathy of the 
best-disposed audience. The shortest consideration of the 
drama will help to an estimate of this criticism. 

1 The Promise of May ' opens before Farmer Steers house,, 
on his eightieth birthday. His labourers and farm-servants 
are keeping holiday ; and, as if to crown the festival, his 
daughter Dora, who has been from home nursing a relation, 
returns to join in their pleasure. Eva, Steer's other daughter, 
has, we learn, a lover, Philip Edgar, a wealthy gentleman, 
who has seduced her under a promise of marriage. And 
in the course of the act he persuades her to elope with him. 
He is an amateur philosopher, full of catch-words and 
Hedonistic axioms. Content to seek his own pleasure, he 
has said in his heart that there is no God ; and, the religious 
sanction being removed, it follows that there is little enough 



THE PROMISE OF MA Y AND BECKET 207 

obligation to be moral. He is a strange lover for the simple 
farmer's daughter. 

The first act takes us no further than this in the story, 
and then five years elapse. With the second act we find 
Farmer Dobson, a stolid country bumpkin, who, in the 
opening of the play, was in love with Dora, still seeking for 
her promise unsuccessfully. Their conversation reveals the 
fact that five years ago Eva had run away, leaving a letter 
to hint that she would drown herself. At the news of her 
disgrace the old father had worked himself into a fury 
which subsided into paralysis, from which he emerged 
blind. To this result of his selfish sin Edgar returns, 
under the name of Harold. Time and travel have bronzed 
him, and he wears a beard : so changed, he passes un- 
recognised. Dobson alone suspects him, but Edgar shows 
the simple farmer a newspaper notice of his father's death, 
which, from an identity in names, he easily passes off as his 
own. Edgar at once makes love to Dora, who is readily 
won, when news reaches them of an accident in a neigh- 
bouring lane, where a lady has been run over. With this 
the second act closes. 

In Act in. we find Eva, the unknown lady who was hurt 
in the accident, nursed by Dora, who is keeping her sister's 
identity a secret from their father. Eva, however, in the 
yearning for his forgiveness, consents at last to tell him ; but 
the old man is too much troubled by his disease to under- 
stand her. Then Edgar and Eva meet ; and Dora learns 
who her lover really is. Eva, at the horror of the meeting, 
drops dead : and, over her sister's dead body, Dora curses 
the man who hoped to ' make amends ' by a marriage that 
seems, to her sentiment, little less than incestuous. And 
so the curtain falls on the two face to face, understanding 
each other at last. 

The character of Philip Edgar is, on the face of it, 
repulsive ; but the stage has long been accustomed to the 
portrayal of repulsive characters. A drama that should 
occupy itself with soberness and chastity alone could never 
attain to strength and vitality. There is, without doubt, 
something peculiarly repellent in Edgar's idea that a marriage 
with Dora could make amends for Eva's seduction j but the 



208 ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON 

notion is never submitted to us as other than repellent. It 
is a course of thought sufficiently natural to a mind whose 
sentiment is sensation, whose love is lust. It is absurd to 
quarrel with a dramatist for drawing an unpleasant picture. 
The question of the critic is not — Is the picture pretty? — 
but — Is it real ? is it in accordance with nature, without 
transgressing the limit of art ? Now, it can hardly be held 
that the character of Edgar is too unlovely for art. Its 
restless inconsistency, its brutal estimate of womanhood, its 
low level of life, are all parts of that strange unsettled state 
of mind, born of an unconsidered study of philosophy. 
'A surface man of theories, true to none.' 

Philip Edgar has no real philosophy. If he is nearer to 
one school than another, it is to the doctrine of the Egoistic 
Hedonist. 

* " And if my pleasure breed another's pain,' 

he says, 

"Well, — is not that the course of Nature, too? " 

And again : 

* One time's vice may be 
The virtue of another ; and Vice and Virtue 
Are but two masks of self.' 

He has no trust for woman ; to his creed trust is im- 
possible. He can think of Eva so lowly, as to believe 
her infamous. 

' She who gave herself to me so easily 
Will give herself as easily to another.' 

The character was repellent, and the situation which the 
character made for itself was repellent ; but this repulsive- 
ness was not a reason for the condemnation of the play. 
The gallery has hissed at blacker villains without hooting at 
the author. xAnd yet some part of the failure of ' The 
Promise of May ' was to be ascribed to the character of 
Edgar. And the reason was as follows. It had been 
rumoured, before the play began, that it would deal with 
agnosticism. Many of the audience had come under the 
impression that the principal character was to be a typical 
agnostic. There must have been many men and women in 



THE PROMISE OF MA Y AND BECKET 209 

the house who themselves embraced agnosticism ; and, 
when they found an inconsistent, bestial Hedonist repre- 
sented as their type, they rose to condemn the play which 
belied their creed. On the fourth night one of their number 
rose, not only in spirit, but in person. An eye-witness of 
the scene which astonished the audience at the Globe 
Theatre, on November 14th, 1882, has given the present 
writer a description of the circumstance. Early in the first 
act, while Mr. Hermann Vezin was speaking, a gentleman 
leapt excitedly to his feet from one of the stalls, and cried, 
' I beg to protest : I beg ' A murmur for silence inter- 
rupted him, and he sat down, saying, ' I beg your pardon : 
I will wait till the end of the act.' As soon as the curtain 
had fallen, he again sprang up, exclaiming, * I am an 
agnostic, and I protest against Mr. Tennyson's gross cari- 
cature of our creed.' There was an excited movement of 
the spectators to the foyer, and every one was asking from 
whom the protest had come. The general impression 
decided that the speaker was a distinguished socialistic 
orator and litterateur. But it was known by the next day 
that the interruption had been made by the Marquis of 
Queensberry. 

The protest was based on an error. Tennyson had no 
intention of representing in Philip Edgar an average 
agnostic. Edgar is a man of no definite creed, a philo- 
sopher of no fixed school. He is a restless, unsatisfied 
sensualist, whose mind has been filled with half-formed 
theories, gathered from a desultory and unsystematic study 
of various philosophies. There is no school to which he 
could give offence ; save, perhaps, to that sect of prudery to 
which the representation of any life which pierces beyond 
the limit of the village-green is impure and impious. The 
whole of the discontent was due to a mistaken view of the 
poet's purpose. 

It remains to consider what was the actual germ of failure 
in ' The Promise of May ; ' and beyond doubt it is to be 
traced to the ineffective, inartistic construction of the 
drama. To compare the technique of 'The Promise of 
May ' with that of { Harold ' or ' The Cup ' is to find in the 
new play a strange and unexpected decline in skill. The 





210 ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON 

first act is hampered by soliloquy (a device which is far too 
frequently employed throughout the play), and is prolonged, 
after the final situation, by an unnecessary dialogue and 
dance. The second act is less fortunate still. Edgar is 
introduced to his old surroundings under circumstances 
which would inevitably have prompted him to keep away. 
The thin disguise of a beard helps every one to forget him, 
and Dobson, whose suspicions are aroused, is convinced by 
the thinnest artifice. From this point the characters vie 
with one another in their eagerness to be hoodwinked. 
Twice in the last act Edgar all but betrays himself; but 
Dora, who would surely feel some interest in her lover's 
past life, fails to follow up her questions. Edgar himself is 
even more complaisant. He knows that there is an invalid 
in the house, and that she is being kept in the background ; 
but he never troubles himself to ask who she is. Dora, who 
has all along closed her eyes to what is bad in him, leaps in 
the moment to the other extreme — without pity or pardon. 
Over the body of the dead, in the very moment of death, 
the dramatist introduces a coarse struggle between the rival 
lovers, which has neither motive nor justification. The 
play is, in effect, invertebrate. The leading idea is not 
new : the treatment is unskilful. ' The Promise of May ' is 
the only work of Tennyson, perhaps, which his admirers 
would be glad to forget. It will always remain the weapon 
with which his depreciators will work their worst. But in 
spite of ' The Promise of May,' the spirit of the dramatist 
is alive in the author of ' Maud ' and ' Harold.' 

By the kindness of his friend, Mr. Hall Caine, the writer 
is enabled to print in this context a facsimile letter from 
Tennyson, referring to the virulent criticism vented by the 
Daily Press upon ' The Promise of May.' Its critical 
interest needs no further comment. The violence of the 
attack upon the play was, as is usual in such cases, dis- 
figured by a variety of bad taste; and the result was a 
period of silence with the Laureate. In March 1883, 
' Frater, Ave atque Vale ' appeared in The Nineteenth 
Century ; but no considerable work of Tennyson's was pub- 
lished during that year. The press was to have a further 
opportunity to attack him in another field. 



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212 ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON 

During the autumn of 1883 Mr. Gladstone and Tennyson 
started for a yachting tour in North-west Europe. On their 
outward way, they were presented with the freedom of the 
burgh of Kirkwall ; and Mr. Gladstone took the opportunity 
of the presentation to make a speech full of generous admira- 
tion of the Laureate and his work. He said : ' We public 
men — who play a part which places us much in view of our 
countrymen — we are subject to the danger of being momen- 
tarily intoxicated by the kindness, the undue homage of 
kindness, we may receive. It is our business to speak, but 
the words which we speak have wings, and fly away and dis- 
appear. The work of Mr. Tennyson is of a higher order. I 
anticipate for him the immortality for which England and 
Scotland have supplied, in the course of their long national 
life, many claims. Your record to-day of the additions 
which have been made to your municipal body may happen 
to be examined in distant times, and some may ask with 
regard to the Prime Minister, "Who was he, and what did 
he do ? We know nothing about him." But the Poet 
Laureate has written his own song on the hearts of his 
countrymen that can never die.' 

Arrived at Copenhagen, they were entertained by the 
King of Denmark, meeting the Czar and Czarina, the King 
of Greece, and the Princess of Wales. On the following 
day the Royal party lunched on the visitors' yacht, and in 
the afternoon Tennyson read his guests extracts from his 
poetry. It was generally understood that it was during this 
tour that Mr. Gladstone suggested to Tennyson an offer 
which, a month or two later, the Laureate accepted. Be 
that as it may, Tennyson had not long returned to England 
when it was reported that he was about to be created a 
Peer. In December the rumour was authenticated, and on 
the 1 8th of January 1884 he was gazetted Baron Tennyson 
of Aldworth and Farringford. It was a ripe opportunity for 
the comment of cheap journalism, and these opportunities 
are not neglected. It is only as they pass and are forgotten 
that their eager and importunate insistence shows its feeble 
and ephemeral nature to full disadvantage. 

Lord Tennyson's attendances in the House were very 
few ; his vote was only registered on two occasions. He 




ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON. 



214 ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON 

voted in support of the bill for extending the County 
Franchise, and paired in favour of the bill which advocated 
the legalisation of marriage with a deceased wife's sister. 

This year made a further gap in the circle of Tennyson's 
friends; in June 1883 Edward FitzGerald died. Just 
before his friend's death, as a later volume of poems tells 
us, Mr. Hallam Tennyson found, among some old manu- 
script in his fathers handwriting, the dramatic monologue 
'Tiresias,' which the Laureate hastened to send to Fitz- 
Gerald, with a hearty prelude which laughed at his friend's 
vegetarian diet, and recalled with tenderness those 

' gracious times 
When, in our younger London days, 
You found some merit in my rhymes, 
And I more pleasure in your praise.' 

But FitzGerald's friendly criticism was not to touch 
'Tiresias.' 

* And while I fancied that my friend 
For this brief idyll would require 

A less diffuse and opulent end, 
And would defend his judgment well, 

If I should deem it overnice — 
The tolling of his funeral bell 

Broke on my Pagan Paradise.' 

'So many dead, and him the last.', FitzGerald's death was 
to render the life of the Master of Trinity the last tie that 
bound Tennyson to the old Cambridge memories. For 
FitzGerald had been one of the first to prophesy great and 
goodly things for his friend, with an enthusiasm that was 
disappointed by the event. But, though his criticism lost 
sympathy, his friendship for Tennyson never faltered ; when 
he failed to understand the poet, he never missed his hold 
upon the man. 

The year that followed was uneventful, save for the 
publication of 'The Cup 'and 'The Falcon,' and the one 
entirely new work, ' Becket,' which appeared in November. 
But in March 1884 an interesting occasion elicited a poem 
from Tennyson. A Shakespearian exhibition was organised 
at the Albert Hall, in support of the Chelsea Hospital for 
Women. In connection with this a small pamphlet was 



THE PROMISE OF MAY AND BECKET 215 

published, including poems by Robert Browning and 
Tennyson. The latter's contribution was written fifty 
years before, and found its way into the daily papers before 
the little book was issued. It ran as follows : — 

' Not he that breaks the dams, but he 
That thro' the channels of the State 
Convoys the people's wish, is great ; 
His name is pure, his fame is free. ' 

In the same year he accepted the Presidency of the 
Incorporated Society of Authors. 

Tennyson also contributed, during the year, a set of 
introductory verses to ' Rosa Rosarum,' a little book upon 
roses, by E. V. B. (The Hon. Mrs. Boyle), in which the 
poet pictured Love flying across the night to wake the rose 
into bloom. 

In the same year, in Macmillari s Magazine for December, 
he printed the stirring lines, ' Freedom.' This poem is a 
kind of forecast of the second ' Locksley Hall,' a protest 
against ' the lawless crowd,' whose wild cry for progress is 
so violently opposed to the poet's calm faith in the gradual 
development of man, and his distrust of 

( Raw Haste, half-sister to Delay.' 

But these were lesser efforts of his genius. In November 
1884 he published one of his most considerable works, 
which bore, for the first time, the imprint of Messrs. Mac- 
millan, to whom the Laureate's copyright was now trans- 
ferred, and who henceforward remained his publishers until 
his death. The life of ' Becket ' had been under treatment 
for a long while ; and it is probable that, when the play was 
begun, it was intended for the stage. Experiences which 
intervened, however, turned the course of the poet's inten- 
tion, and when ' Becket ' w r as finally printed it contained a 
disclaimer of any hope that it would, ' in its present form, 
meet the exigencies of our modern theatre.' It is, therefore, 
necessary to treat ' Becket ' from a standpoint different from 
that at which the other dramas have been surveyed. It 
must be approached, not as a stage-play, but as a dramatic 
poem : as a study of character and life rather than as an 
effort of movement and action. But, in fact, it has a fine 



216 ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON 

dramatic motive — the struggle between the interests of 
Church and State, influenced by the struggle between a 
legitimate and an unlawful love. Even as the play stands, 
were it not to set one's self against the author's expressed 
desire, it would be interesting to point out a number of 
situations eminently adapted to the necessities of stage- 
production. In a condensed form ' Becket ' would make a 
strong play : in its present shape it is a noble study of a 
prolonged and bitter struggle. Henry, weak and short- 
sighted, owes everything to his Chancellor. Becket helps 
him to his love, protects Rosamund, spends the vast sums 
decreed to him to procure the glory and reputation of his 
King. But upon his appointment to the Archbishopric the 
struggle between Church and State begins. He lays aside 
the seal of his office as Lord Chancellor, and offends the 
King by his resignation. He refuses to study Henry's 
wishes, w T hen they seem to him to run counter to the welfare 
of the Church. ' This mitred Hercules ' is adamant in his 
devotion to his spiritual office. He estranges the King by 
these differences: he excites the enmity of his fellow-bishops 
by his scruples : he attracts to himself the aversion of 
Fitzurse and Tracy by his protection of Rosamund. And 
for the same reason he makes a foe of the Queen. The 
two women, who move in the background, influencing the 
lives of Henry and Becket, are vividly contrasted. Eleanor 
is passionate and jealous, Rosamund is tender and yearning 
— a caged bird, ill at ease in the prison of her bower. It is 
Becket who saves her from the dagger and cup of the 
Queen ; and from that moment his keenest foe is a woman. 
And when she tells the King that Rosamund has, at 
Becket's instigation, passed from his love unto Godstow 
Nunnery, the prelate has his world against him. From 
that moment he has but the one weak woman he has helped 
for friend, and she is left to pray over his dead body in the 
cathedral. Where history has been set aside, the dramatic 
situation has been strengthened. The end of the play is 
full of action and excitement. 

' Becket ' has one point in common with ' Queen Mary : ' 
it is the story of a prolonged tension. But whereas in 
'Queen Mary' the tension never relaxes into movement, 



THE PROMISE OF MA Y AND BECKET 217 

in ' Becket ' it is the tension of a struggle, as of a rope 
stretched between two contending parties, quivering with 
the energy of either, giving now on this side, now on that. 
In this, ' Becket ' is dramatic ; there is a sense of struggle, 
and a sound of the panting breath of fight. There are 
passages in the play of consummate eloquence. Such are 
the speech of Becket, in which he describes his dream, 
when God sealed him as elect ; the words of Henry in 
condemnation of Becket in the third scene of the first act ; 
and the scene between Henry and Rosamund at the open- 
ing of Act 11. The play contains also two of the most 
melodious of all Tennyson's songs — 'The Reign of the 
Roses,' and the song at Rosamund's bower — 

' Is it the wind of the dawn that I hear in the pine overhead ? ' 

' Becket/ in a condensed form, was produced at the 
Lyceum Theatre on the 6th of February 1893 with almost 
unqualified success. The part of Walter Map was entirely 
omitted, and the scenes in the bower, which in the original 
are scattered through the play, were united into two com- 
pact and spirited acts. The play was then found to move 
with alacrity, and Mr. Irving's impersonation of the prin- 
cipal character was so dignified, so reposeful, so far from 
his peculiar mannerism as to delight and astonish even 
his most enthusiastic admirers. The play continued to 
run throughout the season, and the event tended to dis- 
prove the popular supposition that Tennyson's drama is 
impossible upon the stage. 



CHAPTER XIII 

FROM TIRESIAS TO DEMETER 

A pleasant sympathy and appreciation, which frequently 
issued in graceful word and act, seem to have drawn the 
poets of America to Tennyson. Edgar Allan Poe, Emer- 
son, and Longfellow had all their tribute of admiration to 
offer, and in 1885 Whittier joined the chorus of esteem. 
On January 26th Gordon had fallen at Khartoum, and some 
two months later the Quaker poet wrote to the Laureate, 
asking him for a set of verses designed for the hero's 
cenotaph. In answer, Tennyson sent the well-know r n 
quartette, ' Warrior of God, man's friend,' which has re- 
ceived a later correction to fit it for a motto for the Boys' 
National Memorial Home at Woking. The lines have less 
concentrated strength than the epitaph on Sir John Franklin, 
where inspiration may have been aided by a tie of relation- 
ship, but they are inferior to no other of the poet's memorial 
verses. The terse and direct utterance expresses much 
thought in a little room. 

Three years later Tennyson received yet another tribute 
from America, in the homage of Walt Whitman, to whom 
he replied with the geniality which he had always ready 
for a kindred spirit. ' Dear Walt Whitman,' he wrote, ' I 
thank you for your kind thought of me. I value the photo- 
graph much, and I wish that I could see not only this sun- 
picture, excellent as I am told it is, but also the living 
original. May he still live and flourish for many years 
to be.' 

Mr. J. T. Fields, too, paid a visit to the poet, and walked 
with him on the downs in the moonlight. Suddenly he 
saw 7 Tennyson drop on his knees in the grass. ' Violets, 
man, violets !' he cried : 'smell them, and you'll sleep the 
better.' His keen sense of smell had detected the flowers 
as he walked. It was to Mr. Fields that Tennyson gave 

218 



FROM TIRE SI AS TO DE METER 219 

the naive invitation, ' Come and let me read you "Maud." 
You'll never forget it.' The open, direct speech of the 
poet was always an exact indication of his thought. 

In the November of 1885 Tennyson published another 
volume of poems — 'Tiresias,' — and the tribute which 
Robert Browning had paid to his friend was returned 
in a hearty dedication — 

TO MY GOOD FRIEND 

ROBERT BROWNING 

WHOSE GENIUS AND GENIALITY 

WILL BEST APPRECIATE WHAT MAY BE BEST 

AND MAKE MOST ALLOWANCE FOR WHAT MAY BE WORST 

THIS VOLUME 

IS 

AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED. 

It is characteristic of a certain shyness in Tennyson 
that he never told Browning of the dedication, and it was 
not till the book was in the hands of the public that the 
latter learned the circumstance from a friend. 

The collection was, as it were, an aftermath of the poetic 
harvest, — a regathering of many diverse elements into a 
single sheaf. 'Tiresias,' with its dedication and epilogue 
to FitzGerald, was accompanied by 'The Wreck,' ' Despair,' 
'The Ancient Sage,' 'The Flight,' 'To-morrow,' and 'The 
Spinster's Sweet-' Arts.' A new idyll, ' Balin and Balan,' 
followed. The patriotic poems were enriched by the 
addition of ' The Charge of the Heavy Brigade ; ' and the 
volume also contained ' To Virgil,' originally printed in 
the Nineteenth Century in November 1882, 'The Dead 
Prophet,' ' Early Spring,' the ' Prefatory Poem to my 
Brother's Sonnets,' ' Frater, Ave atque Vale,' another con- 
tribution to the N'meteenth Century (March 1883), ' Helen's 
Tower,' the Epitaphs on Lord Stratford de RedclyfTe, 
General Gordon, and Caxton, 'To the Duke of Argyll,' 
'Hands all Round,' 'Freedom,' 'To H.R.H. Princess 
Beatrice,' and the lines, ' Old poets foster'd under kindlier 
skies,' which were subsequently renamed ' Poets and their 



220 ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON 

Bibliographies.' It was an extremely interesting collection 
from the variety and wealth of its contents ; but, while 
almost every one of the poems illustrated a different phase 
in the poet's development, none of them was perhaps re- 
presentative of the very best work of the period which it 
suggested. ' Tiresias,' written many years before its publi- 
cation, shares the characteristics of 'Ulysses ' and 'Tithonus,' 
missing the strong dramatic vigour of the one and the 
jewelled imagery of the other poem. ' The Wreck ' and 
'The Flight' belong to the directly dramatic period, and 
the first of the two has an intense and rugged pathos of 
its own. ' The Flight,' on the other hand, assumes a sim- 
plicity which, at moments, scarcely escapes the common- 
place. ' Despair ' is an unrivalled example of Tennyson's 
most dramatic mood. ' To-morrow ' and ' The Spinster's 
Sweet-'Arts' are notable additions to the collection of 
poems in dialect, falling but little, if at all, below the level 
of 'The Northern Farmer.' 'The Charge of the Heavy 
Brigade,' on the other hand, is far less stirring and irresist- 
ible than the earlier story of Balaclava. 'The Ancient 
Sage' is another declaration of Tennyson's faith, and of 
his strong, unfaltering doubt of doubt. It is vain, he holds 
again, to question ; the eye of faith must look beyond the 
shadows and mists of the moment. 

1 Look higher, then — perchance — thou mayest — beyond 
A hundred ever-rising mountain lines, 
And past the range of Night and Shadow — see 
The high-heaven dawn of more than mortal day 
Strike on the Mount of Vision ! So, farewell.' 

'Early Spring,' which appeared in 1884 in an American 

periodical, The Youth's Companion, is a return to the 

Nature of the earlier lyrics, full of the tints and rustling 
voices of the coming summer : 

1 Opens a door in Heaven ; 

From skies of glass 
A Jacob's ladder falls 

On greening grass, 
And o'er the mountain-walls 

Young Angels pass. 



FROM TIRESIAS TO DEMETER 221 

Till at thy chuckled note, 

Thou twinkling bird, 
The fairy fancies range, 

And, lightly stirr'd, 
Ring little bells of change 

From word to word.' 

FitzGerald, we feel, would have waked into eulogy at this 
strain, — a melody that swings back like an echo from 
Herrick. 

In ' The Dead Prophet ' the poet protests, once again, 
and this time in an allegory, against the post-mortem 
analysis of the great. The Beldam, who comes to the dead 
body of the prophet, to tear his heart out for men to see, 
is called ' Reverence ' among men ; but in heaven she is 
recognised as a curse. There is an unsparing realism in 
the grim picture of her sacrilege : 

1 She gabbled, as she groped in the dead, 
And all the people were pleased ; 
" See, what a little heart," she said, 
" And the liver is half-diseased ! " 

She tore the Prophet after death, 

And the people paid her well. 
Lightnings flicker'd along the heath ; 

One shriek'd, " The fires of Hell ! " ' 

The same note is struck, in a calmer cadence, in ' Poets 
and their Bibliographies.' It is an echo of that early in- 
tolerance of criticism w T hich took hold upon the poet, even 
in his Cambridge days. Tennyson's attitude in these 
poems is somewhat unworthy of his strength ; it is petulant, 
and a little unreasonable. A certain crude, unmannerly 
curiosity of journalism is, perhaps, fairly rebuked ; but it is al- 
together outside the limit of the poet's dignity to chafe against 
the quiet, reverent record of bibliography. 'What is writ, 
is writ ; ' it remains as the work of the life that wrote it \ 
a desire to tabulate and analyse such work cannot be justly 
compared to the inarticulate gabbling of the crone over 
the heart of the dead prophet. To protest too much is to 
lose the true touch of art ; and in ' The Dead Prophet ' 
Tennyson can scarcely escape the suggestion of an over- 
eagerness for protestation. 



222 ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON 

The new idyll, the longest poem in the volume, seems, 
if read alone, to lack the interest and incident of the other 
Arthurian poems, and to fail for want of motive. The 
savage brothers, tamed to fidelity, suggest in the opening 
the roughness of Geraint, at the close the despairing energy 
of Pelleas. The pathos of their brotherhood and death is 
not very tenderly traced, nor does their story appeal very 
closely to the reader's sympathy. But if the poem be 
placed in the position which it now fills, and read in order 
between ' Enid ' and ' Vivien,' it is at once felt to bridge 
over a gulf, and to bring the Epic into a closer unity. It 
connects the periods of the rise and fall of the Round 
Table, carries the story of Guinevere's faithlessness a further 
step toward discovery, and introduces, with a touch of 
picturesque sensuousness, the coming of Vivien. Her 
song sounds as a first voice of impurity, drawing nearer 
through the alleys of the wood : 

1 The fire of Heaven is lord of all things good, 
And starve not thou this fire within thy blood, 
But follow Vivien thro' the fiery flood ! 
The fire of Heaven is not the flame of Hell ! ' 

This intermediate position of ' Balin and Balan ' accentuates 
the suggestion already made that the Idylls must be studied 
as a whole, not reviewed each as a separate, disconnected 
poem. Without the rest, ' Balin and Balan ' has but a slight 
significance ; with them, it lends completeness and progress 
to the Arthurian legend. 

But the strongest poem in the ' Tiresias ' volume, as we 
have already hinted, was the much-disputed ' Despair.' It 
combines with singular intensity the analytic and dramatic 
faculties of the Tennysonian mind. A man and his w T ife, 
communing together in a perfect sympathy, come to speak 
of God, and, estimating Him by the popular standard of a 
God of Vengeance, lose faith in Him altogether. Their 
despair seeks consolation in suicide ; the woman is drowned, 
'the man rescued by a minister of the sect he had abandoned.' 
With merciless sincerity he tells the story of his doubt. It 
is no blasphemy against the God of Mercy : it is merely a 
protest against that false God of Vengeance whom the 



FROM TIRESIAS TO DEMETER 223 

theology of the earlier years of the nineteenth century re- 
presented as the only Saviour of mankind. It is a cry 
against a narrow creed that renders religion a worship of 
injustice, that twists the denunciations of the prophets into 
a denial of the Gospel of the Son of God. 

' Ah yet — I have had some glimmer, at times, in my gloomiest woe, 
Of a God behind all — after all — the great God for aught that I know ; 
But the God of Love and of Hell together — they cannot be thought, 
If there be such a God, may the Great God curse him and bring him 
to nought ! ' 

The vigour has passed for blasphemy ; but to judge it so 
is to misunderstand. It is the voice of protest against a 
view of God conceived by priestcraft : a view which shuts 
out all vision of a Creator whose name is Love. The pro- 
test came late, perhaps : we have learnt to understand our 
faith to richer and more divine purpose. But fifty years 
ago it was otherwise. Fifty years ago the horrors of Hell 
blinded the eye to the splendours of Heaven ; and the 
eternal doctrine of eternal punishment led many minds into 
atheism. There was room for the voice of reason, which 
was also the voice of the new dispensation. And no more 
reverent, no more faithful voice could have been found 
than that of Alfred Tennyson. For his faith had triumphed 
through a recognition of the infallible mercy that works 
through ways that at times pass man's understanding. 

In the next year (1886) Tennyson had to face another 
loss, — this time from among the number of his own family. 
His younger son, Lionel, who had been attacked by fever 
in India, died on April the twentieth, on shipboard, during 
his journey home. The earlier days of his illness had been 
lightened by the kindness of Lord DufTerin, in whose 
company he was travelling. Lionel Tennyson had entered 
the Political and Secret Department of the India Office, 
and attracted the notice of Lord DufTerin, for whom he 
conceived a very tender regard ; and it was at his invitation 
that Lionel Tennyson undertook the fatal journey to India 
which resulted in the fever, throughout the course of which 
his host did for him all that kindness and solicitude 
could. 



224 ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON 

' " Unspeakable," 
he wrote, 

" Their kindness/" 

But no care or affection could save the waning life. His 
coffin was buried in the Red Sea — 

' Beneath a hard Arabian moon 
And alien stars,' 

and the cenotaph at Freshwater bears the following in- 
scription : 

IN MEMORIAM 

LIONEL TENNYSON 

FILII, MARITI, PATRIS CARISSIMI, 

FORMA, MENTE, MORUM SIMPLICITATE 

LAUDEM INTER AEQUALES MATURE ADEPTI 

FAMAM QUOQUE IN REPUBLICA, SI VITA SUFFECISSET, 

SINE DUBIO ADEPTURI 

OBDORMIVIT IN CHRISTO 

DIE APR. XX. ANNO CHRISTI MDCCCLXXXVI. AETAT. XXXII. 

ET IN MARI APUD PERIN INDORUM 

SEPULTUS EST. 

The loss affected the Tennysons so keenly that Dr. Oliver 
Wendell Holmes, who shortly afterwards visited England, 
was afraid that any attempt of his to see the Laureate would 
be unwelcome. But Lionel Tennyson's father-in-law, Mr. 
Frederick Locker-Lampson, assured him to the contrary : 
and Dr. Holmes and his daughter were persuaded to visit 
Farringford. They met with a most genial reception. Lady 
Tennyson, though an invalid at the time, exerted herself to 
entertain her guests ; and Mrs. Hallam Tennyson drove 
Miss Holmes in her pony-cart to see Alum Bay and the 
Needles. Dr. Holmes was much attracted by the scenery of 
Farringford, and especially by the richness of the foliage. 
Tennyson himself took great pleasure in pointing out ' the 
finest and rarest trees ' to his American visitor ; and he had 
found a sympathetic spirit. 'I felt,' wrote Dr. Holmes, 'as 
if weary eyes and overtaxed brains might (here) reach their 
happiest haven of rest.' He did not hear Tennyson read, 
however : an omission which he afterwards regretted. ' I 



FROM TIRESIAS TO DEMETER 225 

had rather listen to a poet reading his own verses than hear 
the best elocutionist that ever spouted recite them. He 
may not have a good voice or enunciation, but he puts his 
heart and his interpretative intelligence into every line, 
word, and syllable. I should have liked to hear Tennyson 
read such a line as 

" Laborious orient ivory, sphere in sphere." ' 

But the visit was a short one, and the pleasure was 
denied. 

In the August of 1886 Tennyson paid yet another visit to 
Cambridge, accompanied by his son and daughter-in-law, 
Mr. and Mrs. Hallam Tennyson. The Laureate had been 
staying with Mr. Locker-Lampson at Cromer, and, on his 
way to Cambridge, spent his birthday at Ely. From the 
seventh to the ninth of August he was at Cambridge. 
Tennyson himself was put up in Trinity ; the others of the 
party stayed at the Bull. On the Saturday and Sunday 
they dined in College, the first evening with Mr. Jenkinson, 
the second with Mr. W. Aldis Wright ; and the famous 
1834 port was brought out in Tennyson's honour. On 
the Sunday morning he walked with Mr. Aldis Wright to 
Coton Church. 

These were months of comparative inaction, but with 
the December of 1886 another volume of Tennyson's work 
was issued by Messrs. Macmillan, — a book of 201 pages, 
150 of which were devoted to i The Promise of May,' which, 
after a four years' oblivion, was now first presented to the 
reading public. ' Locksley Hall Sixty Years After,' as the 
book was named, was dedicated to Lady Tennyson, and 
contained, besides the drama and the poem from which 
the volume took its title, two slighter pieces, 'The Fleet' 
and the ode on the ' Opening of the Indian and Colonial 
Exhibition by the Queen.' The first of these, suggested 
by a speech made by Sir Graham Berry at the Colonial 
Institute on the 9th of November 1886, has already been 
alluded to in brief. It is an unusually rough passage of 
denunciation, strongly, if uncouthly, patriotic. The Ode 
for the Indian Exhibition was suited to its subject, but not, 
perhaps, of permanent value. The most memorable poem 

P 



226 ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON 

in the new volume was the eponymous essay in trochaics, 
which may, indeed, be justly considered the most important 
product of the poet's later years. A new experiment, 
made in the winter of life, is an unusual phenomenon, and 
' Locksley Hall Sixty Years After ' possesses the elements 
of an almost unique interest. A return to the old scenes 
and old memories of boyhood, — made, not in dramatic 
fancy alone but in actual fact, — years after the earlier event, 
is practically unprecedented in poetry. It requires an 
irresistible dramatic talent to recall and rebuke, after such a 
lapse of time, the emotions and sensibilities which were, 
even in the first case, dramatically assumed by the poet. 
The two ' Locksley Halls,' indeed, regarded side by side, 
afford one of the most indisputable evidences of Tennyson's 
dramatic energy. In the first poem the speaker is an 
impetuous boy-lover, losing himself in the passion of a love 
which has been disdained. His indignation at his Amy's 
faithfulness wastes its strength in unmanly depreciation of 
his rival, and in boyish threats of a flight into a far country 
and a marriage amid some savage tribe. The speaker in 
the second poem is the same, the boy grown old. With 
exquisite adroitness Tennyson traces the mental develop- 
ment. The years have brought reconciliation to the rival, 
and a stronger, more reasonable, love for Edith, the woman 
whom the speaker has eventually married : 

1 She with all the charm of woman, she with all the breadth of man, 
Strong in will and rich in wisdom, Edith, yet so lowly-sweet, 
Woman to her inmost heart, and woman to her tender feet.' 

But the old passionate ardour is not lost ; it has only 
shifted its standpoint. It is no longer against a wealthy 
rival and the curse of gold that the speaker inveighs ; the 
time has changed, and the speaker has changed with it. 
Now he is occupied with the rise of the mob ; the un- 
educated, ignorant cry of ' Forward ' maddens him. He 
sees the blatant orator of the hustings leading the people to 
the edge of an abyss that their inexperience cannot fathom : 
he watches them straining toward a development which is, 
in fact, deformity. The age of aristocracy has given place 
to the age of democracy, and the reaction to extremes is 



FROM TIRE SI AS TO DE METER 227 

fatal. The fire of boyhood bursts out again to overwhelm 
the folly of the moment. He has gone ' in among the 
throngs of men/ and has sympathised with them ; but he 
has no heart for revolution. As in the first poem he 
returned upon himself to rebuke his desire to rebel, so in 
the second he cries to the crowd about him not to follow 
the wild flickering of the fen-fires, but to guide their calmer 
journey by the beacon-light of the polestar of Truth : 

1 Follow Light, and do the Right, for man can half-control his doom — 
Till you find the deathless Angel seated in the vacant tomb.' 

With a ruthless detail, too, he marks the more unlovely 
aspects of the age. The dynamite, ' the villainous centre- 
bit,' the ' roofs of slated hideousness/ — all inspire him with 
a loathing of the grosser struggle for life. He pierces into 
the heart of the city, to c the crowded couch of incest in the 
warrens of the poor,' to the thousand and one miseries half- 
begotten by the overpowering lust for gold. But even in 
the darkest despair he finds one ray of hope. A better age 
may, he feels, be slowly gathering out of all this wretched- 
ness : 

1 Light the fading gleam of Even ?. light the glimmer of the dawn ? 
Aged eyes may take the growing glimmer for the gleam withdrawn. 

Far away beyond her myriad coming changes earth will be 
Something other than the wildest modern guess of you and me.' 

And so he leaves Locksley Hall to its new boy-lord, and 
leaves it with a trust in its brighter future. 

Much has been said in disapproval of the later ' Locksley 
Hall ; ' but the poet, who is not afraid to teach his people 
their limitations, cannot rest upon an undisputed popularity. 
The poem had too much vigour, too much truth, to please 
the easy-going optimist. But Truth is the test by which all 
literature must be tried ; and ' Locksley Hall Sixty Years 
After ' will be recognised, when the verdict of many more 
than another sixty years has been pronounced upon it, to 
be one of the clearest, most unsparing pictures of its age 
to be found in contemporary literature. And when that 
recognition ripens round it, Tennyson's sincerity will not 
be without its reward. 

The two years that followed were comparatively silent. 



223 ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON 

In May 1889 was published, to secure copyright, in an 
edition ultimately reduced to two copies, a lyric entitled 
' The Throstle ; J this is a mere leaflet, consisting of a title 
and one page of text. Later on this poem was widely 
circulated in the periodical press. It was not till the end 
of 1889 that a new volume appeared. The 'Jubilee Ode ' 
of 1887 was scarcely popular; its changeful metre and 
rough eloquence seemed to evade criticism. But in August 
1889, on his eightieth birthday, Tennyson was the recipient 
of quite a number of literary compliments. None was 
heartier or more sincere than the letter (it must have been 
almost the last) which he received from Robert Browning. 
* Let me say,' said the brother-poet, 'that I associate 
myself with the universal pride of o.ur country in your 
glory ; and in its hope that for many and many a year we 
may have your very self among us, — secure that your 
poetry will be a wonder and delight to all those appointed 
to come after. And for my own part let me further say, I 
have loved you dearly. May God bless you and yours.' 
Four months later the kindly spirit that prompted these 
lines had passed into the silence. 

The birthday was also graced by an exquisite sonnet from 
the pen of the Laureate's friend, Air. Theodore Watts, who, 
it may be added, after the poet's death, wrote for The 
Athenaeum what was, perhaps, the most graceful and tender 
of all the tributes to his memory. Mr. Watts has, with 
kindly courtesy, permitted the reprint of his sonnet here. 

1 The Eightieth Birthday 

Another birthday breaks : he is with us still. 
There thro' the branches of the glittering trees 
The birthday sun gilds grass and flower : the breeze 

Sends forth, methinks, a thrill— a conscious thrill 

That tells yon meadows by the steaming rill — 
Where, o'er the clover waiting for the bees, 
The mist shines round the cattle to their knees — 

" Another birthday breaks : he is with us still ! " 

For Nature loves him — loves our Tennyson : 
I think of heathery Aldworth rich and rife 

With greetings of a world his song hath won : 
I see him there with loving son and wife, 
His fourscore years a golden orb of life : 

My proud heart swells to think what he hath done.' 



FROM TIRESIAS TO DEMETER 229 

The month which saw Robert Browning's death, and the 
publication of his last work, saw, too, a new book from 
Tennyson's pen — ' Demeter and other Poems,' issued in 
December 1889. Of the twenty-eight poems which com- 
posed the volume, six at least were worthy of Tennyson's 
ripest prime, while the whole book must be regarded as a 
marvellous collection of riches, when we consider that the 
author was eighty years old at the time of its publica- 
tion. ' Demeter and Persephone ' is with ' Tithonus ' and 
4 CEnone.' 

1 Thou that hast from men, 
As Queen of Death, that worship which is Fear, 
Henceforth, as having risen from the dead, 
Shalt ever send thy life along with mine 
From buried grain thro' springing blade, and bless 
Their garner'd Autumn also, reap with me, 
Earth-mother, in the harvest hymns of Earth 
The worship which is Love, and see no more 
The Stone, the Wheel, the dimly glimmering lawns 
Of that Elysium, all the hateful fires 
Of Torment, and the shadowy warrior glide 
Along the silent field of Asphodel.' 

' Vastness,' which appeared in Mac m ilia? 1 's Magazine some 
three years before, is full of the sentiment of the second 
'Locksley Hall,'— and, though it puzzled its critics at first, 
the more clear-sighted of its readers recognised its greatness 
from the outset. Mr. W. E. Henley has never, perhaps, 
spoken more vigorously or persuasively than he did in this 
relation. 

'In "Vastness,"' he said, 'the insight into essentials, the 
command of primordial matter, the capacity of vital sugges- 
tion, are gloriously in evidence from the first to the last. 
Here is no touch of ingenuity, no trace of " originality," no 
sign of cleverness . . . nothing is antic, peculiar, super- 
fluous ; but here in epic unity and completeness, here is a 
sublimation of experience expressed by means of a sublima- 
tion of style. It is unique in English, and, for all that one 
can see, it is like to remain unique this good while yet.' 

' Owd Roa ' ranges with ' The Northern Farmer,' and is a 
strong and pathetic example of its class. ' Forlorn ' is more 
vivid than 'The Flight,' and only a little less dramatic than 



230 ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON 

' Despair.' It is the familiar story of a seduction, told in a 
metre of wailing, heart-rending melancholy : 

' Murder would not veil your sin, 

Marriage will not hide it, 
Earth and Hell will brand your name, 
Wretch, you must abide it, 
In the night, O the night, 
Long before the dawning.' 

'The Ring' tells a touching tale in dialogue, sympathetic 
and retentive. ' Happy ' is an intense but somewhat repel- 
lent story of a leper's bride, who refuses to be severed by 
disease from the man she worships. ' Romney's Remorse,' 
another of the dramatic monologues, is enriched by a love- 
song, with a yearning melody : 

1 Beat upon mine, little heart ! beat, beat ! 
Beat upon mine ! You are mine, my sweet ! 
All mine from your pretty blue eyes to your feet, 

My sweet ! ' 

In ' Merlin and the Gleam,' a kind of after-echo of the 
Arthurian cycle, the poet treats in allegory the life that 
strives calmly onward to the far-off heavenly goal. It is 
but one more utterance of the poet's daily creed. 'The 
Throstle ' is a voluptuous burst of music, with an assump- 
tion of the bird-cry which is even more faithful than the 
earlier note of ' The Owl ; ' while in ' Far, far away ' there is 
another onomatopoeic echo of exquisite melody : 

' What sound was dearest in his native dells? 
The mellow lin-lan-lone of evening bells 
Far- far-away. ' 

And last, yet incomparably first, stands that perfect poem 
which is above criticism — composed (it is said) during the 
poet's passage across the Solent — ! Crossing the Bar.' It 
has been translated into Greek and Latin, and set to 
music ; but no alien note was needed to complete the 
dignified perfection of its harmony. There is no more 
beautiful utterance in all the range of English verse. 



CHAPTER XIV 

THE CLOSING YEARS 

With an extraordinary vigour and freshness Lord Tennyson 
continued, even after 

' The century's three strong ei-hts had met 
To drag him down to seventy-nine,' 

to produce work of the very highest literary excellence. 
The later years of his life were spiritedly free from any 
sense of decay, any indication that his natural force had 
abated. The work of a poet of advanced years is wont to 
prove no more than an echo of his earlier inspiration. As 
a rule, there remains a certain facility of expression, and an 
aptitude for melody, while the animating thought withers, 
and the poetry lacks grasp and actuality. Moreover, the 
old chords are struck with wearisome fidelity; the search 
for something new has lost its charm. But with Tennyson 
the custom was broken. 

It was left for his eighty-third year to lead him into an 
entirely new field, and to enrich literature with a pastoral, 
fresh with the breath of the meadows, spangled with elfin 
fancies, and flashing with the gossamer of fairy wings. The 
dreamland of Titania's palace, which the critic would assign 
as the home of the boy-lover, was with Tennyson the 
mansion of old age. He rested in Sherwood after the 
burden and heat of the day. 

His surroundings may well have helped him to his 
subject. For years his time was chiefly spent in the 
country. The home at Farringford was full of rustic 
charm, rendered the more emphatic by its seclusion. The 
house is so entirely enclosed by trees as to escape the 
notice of the passer-by. At the back of the garden, a 
bridge, spanning the road which encircles the estate, opens 
up a view of Freshwater Bay, with the Arch and Stag Rocks 

231 



232 ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON 

in the foreground. Here the poet was used to stand even- 
ing after evening in the moonlight, looking down across 
the thick undergrowth towards the glitter of the sea. The 
dell might, even to a less active imagination, seem alive 
w T ith fairies, or peopled by sleeping foresters. It is a wood- 
land of enchantment, and amid its inspiration ' Robin Hood 
and Maid Marian ' grew into life. 

While the play was ripening, little happened to change 
the poet's mind, or divert it from its inspiration. In the 
spring of 1891 he was cruising in the Mediterranean; and 
in the March of that year ' To Sleep,' a tender lyric, with 
' a touch of sadness in it,' was printed in The New Review. 
This song afterwards took its place in the new play. Four 
introductory lines from the Laureate's pen prefaced in the 
same year an edition of Pearl, edited by Mr. Israel Gollancz. 
The echoes of the world without reached him but faintly. 
When they did come, they found him ready with his interest. 
From his dream of Sherwood Forest he could awake to 
indignation at the persecution of the Russian Jews. ' I 
can only say,' he wrote, during the autumn of 1891, * that 
Russia has disgraced her church and her nationality. I 
once met the Czar. He seemed a kind and good-natured 
man. I can scarcely believe that he is fully aware of the 
barbarities perpetrated with his apparent sanction.' The 
spirit that was stirred into fire by the Eyre rebellion was 
still smouldering at Tennyson's heart. 

Meanwhile, his time was divided between Farringford 
and Haslemere ; and it was not till towards the close of 
1 89 1 that the general public learned that Mr. Augustin 
Daly had, after his visit to England, taken back with him 
to New York the manuscript of a play by Tennyson, 
founded on the fortunes of Robin Hood. Early in the 
following year rumour became more active ; forecasts and 
synopses of the action appeared in various papers, and 
interest was energetically awakened. On the 17th of 
March 1892 curiosity was satisfied. Mr. Daly on that day 
produced ' The Foresters : Robin Hood and Maid Marian,' 
in New York, and on the same morning, at ten o'clock, 
Mr. Irving lent his theatre for a copyright performance of 
the play by members of his own company. This early hour 




TENNYSON* S BRIDGE FARRINGFORD. 



234 ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON 

was selected in order to elude the critics, of whom but a 
single representative, it is reported, contrived to be present. 
A copyright performance is usually a crude entertainment 
enough, without rehearsal or embellishment \ but on the 
present occasion the piece had been frequently played over 
beforehand, and the characters were suitably and tastefully 
dressed. Mr. Acton Bond appeared as Robin Hood, and 
Miss Violet Vanbrugh had made a graceful study of Maid 
Marian. Lord Tennyson subsequently sent a copy of his 
works to every member of the company employed in the 
representation. These trifling facts, however, are of interest 
merely as curiosities : the performance in New York is the 
actual centre of our attention. There everything that good 
taste and liberality could do had been done ; the woodland 
scenery was elaborated with artistic picturesqueness, and 
the principal characters were played by the first dramatic 
talent of America. Mr. John Drew was the Robin Hood, 
Miss Ada Rehan the Maid Marian. Cablegrams assured 
London of the complete success of the production, and 
none of the Laureate's plays has received so general an ap- 
proval. Less than a fortnight later the book was in the hands 
of English readers, and critics were expressing their hope 
that ' The Foresters ' might soon be seen upon the London 
stage. But many elements go to the making of a dramatic 
success ; and to argue that a play which had charmed an 
American audience, wou!d be equally popular in England, 
was to reckon without a host of contingencies. The good 
fortune of ' The Foresters ' as a stage-play was, indeed, 
largely due to the circumstances of its production. The 
American mind is always attracted to the romance of 
chivalry more readily than the English. The people of 
the new country miss in themselves that environment of 
the past which is a matter of daily course to the people of 
the fatherland, with whom the familiarity of their history 
has bred a certain carelessness for the relics of antiquity. 
It is always the American who hovers about Westminster 
Abbey, and spends his morning at the Tower of London : 
it is in America that ' As You Like It ' has received its most 
artistic interpretation. It was natural, then, that America 
should appreciate ' The Foresters ' to the full. The pastoral 



THE CLOSING YEARS 235 

charm, the fresh, breezy atmosphere of woodland life, the 
fascination of the brake where every bush concealed its 
bowman, the chivalrous love of man and maid held pure 
in the freedom of the forest, — all these things had a 
peculiar enchantment for the American taste, a charm 
which their familiarity denied to the English. The atmos- 
phere was the secret of success, and the pastoral triumphed. 
It is by no means so certain that it would have succeeded 
in London. The English playgoer and the English critic 
expect, before all things, technical construction : there 
must be progress, continuity, and completion ; the situa- 
tions must be evolved through recognised methods, and 
developed at regulated intervals. The English drama of 
the day is constructed upon a uniform scaffold, and the 
fashion of its building cannot be altered with impunity. 
But Tennyson has always refused to frame his work to the 
orthodox pattern, and of all his plays ' The Foresters ' is 
the least technically dramatic. To say this is not to de- 
preciate its exceptional excellencies. ' The Foresters ' 
should, in fact, be judged from a point of view different 
from that which serves for a study of ' Harold ' or ' The 
Cup.' It should be regarded as a masque, as a pastoral 
play for a summer's afternoon in the woods, an echo of 
medievalism, when thought was free, and art unfettered. It 
has no serious purpose ; from beginning to end it is a 
medley of romance and dreamland. One critic, ingenious 
rather than perspicacious, has insisted that every play of 
Tennyson's involves a great struggle between antagonistic 
motives. In ' Queen Mary,' in 'Becket,'in 'Harold' the 
struggle is obvious ; in ' The Foresters ' the critic discovers 
the contest to lie between just and unjust rule, in the 
persons of Richard and John. But ' The Foresters ' is no 
story of a struggle : the tension never strains into serious- 
ness. It is just a woodland masque, catching an Elizabethan 
echo at every turn. At one moment Marian is with Rosa- 
lind in Arden, at another with Viola in Illyria. Kate and 
Little John are Shakespearian to their last word, and the 
fairies have floated out of 'A Midsummer Night's Dream.' 
There is no character sketch, no dramatical analysis, no 
actual situation. It is all the life of the wood, outlawed 



2^6 ALFRED. LORD TENNYSON 



but not lawless, helping the weak in their distress, eager to 
put down the mighty from their seat. 

' We leave but happy memories to the forest. 
We dealt in the wild justice of the woods. 
All those poor serfs whom we have served will bless us, 
All those pale mouths which we have fed will praise us — 
All widows we have holpen pray for us, 
Our Lady's blessed shrines throughout the land 
Be all the richer fur us. ' 

This is the life of freedom without licence, a life that can 
scarcely thrive outside romance. It was so that they lived 
in Arden. Tennyson's new departure is a return to the 
fields of our greatest dramatist ; even the songs, with their 
infinite melody, remind us of Amiens in the forest. It may 
he, indeed, that this was the kind of play for which the 
Laureate's talent had the strongest inclination. Here his 
fancy could find full scope ; here there was no need for 
technical ingenuity. He could wander through Sherwood 
free, and move his puppets to his will. And the result of 
this freedom is that, within its limits, ' The Foresters ' has 
scarcely a fault. But since it needs the same sense of 
freedom in the actors, the same atmosphere of peace under 
the greenwood tree, the same intangible charm of elf-land, 
it is perhaps to be hoped that it will not be placed upon the 
London stage. For by the blaze and roaring bustle of the 
Strand we lose the touch of pastoral simplicity without 
which ' The Foresters ' is nothing. 

As we leave the work one moment and turn to the man, 
we find Tennyson, during the later years of his life, more 
wedded than ever to that country solitude from which 'The 
Foresters' emerged. The Tennyson of this time has been 
tenderly described by one privileged to be his friend, — Mr. 
Theodore Watts. ' His exclusiveness,' he says, 'is entirely 
mythical. He was the most hospitable of men. ... As 
deeply as some men feel that language was given to men to 
disguise their thoughts, did Tennyson feel that language 
was given to him to declare his thoughts without disguise. 
He knew of but one justification for the thing he said, 
namely, that it was the thing he thought. . . . Behind this 
uncompromising directness was apparent a noble and a 



THE CLOSING YEARS 237 

splendid courtesy ; for above all things, Tennyson was a 
great and forthright English gentleman/ The Tennyson 
whom his friends knew w T as ever so; and Mr. Watts's 
appreciation is invaluable as an insight into that private life 
which was shared by but few chosen. For life at Farring- 
ford was singularly secluded. Before noon on a fine morn- 
ing the poet might be seen walking through Freshwater, 
sometimes alone, sometimes at the side of Lady Tennyson's 
bath-chair. Otherwise he w T as little found. The time of 
pilgrimages, foretold by Arthur Hallam, had begun : and it 
found the Laureate strangely disinclined to observation. It 
was natural, for the spirit of the moment was, as Mr. Watts 
remarks, over-inquisitive. To be a public character is not 
to be public property. Still a certain amount of enthusiasm 
defied suppression ; and, during the years we have been 
surveying, quite a library of literature had clustered round 
Tennyson's home and work. Of this the critical portion 
was naturally the most valuable. Of several short volumes 
on 'In Memoriam,' one by the Rev. A. Gatty, first published 
in 1 88 1, has received the Laureate's approval, and several 
explanatory notes from his own pen. The Rev. F. W. 
Robertson of Brighton had, nineteen years before this, 
published an analysis of the poem which, until it w r as 
superseded by Mr. Gatty's work, stood as the best critical 
monograph on the subject. In 1882 Mr. S. E. Daw r son 
issued a very full and valuable study of 'The Princess,' 
which was followed ten years later by a similar work by Mr. 
Percy M. Wallace, apparently intended in the first place for 
the use of an Indian University. Mr. E. C. Tainsh's Study 
of the Works of Alfred Tennyson (1868, 1869, 1870, 1893) 
treated of the poetry as a whole very fully, judging it, 
however, from an ethical standpoint alone ; and Henry Van 
Dyke's Poetry of Tennyson (1890) included, amid much 
suggestive criticism, some biographical notes, chiefly con- 
cerned with the earlier years of the poet's life. Mr. J. 
Huband Smith, in his Notes and Marginalia (1873), 
gathered together a few facts of interest, but was unfortunate 
in his method of arrangement and recital. The fullest and 
best biographical sketch appeared in 1884 from the pen of 
Mr. H. J. Jennings : it is characterised throughout by discre- 



238 ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON 

tion and good taste. Besides these books, and beside, too, 
an infinity of slighter works, several artistic volumes have 
been concerned with illustrations of Tennyson's homes and 
surroundings. Prominent among these is the Rev. A. J. 
Church's /// the Laureate's Country (1891) a very tasteful 
volume of views, with a brief description in accompaniment. 
Mr. J. Gumming Walters' /// Tennyson Land (1890) was 
the first of many attempts to identify the localities in which 
several of the Laureate's poems are placed. The work was 
interesting as the origin of much criticism of the kind, — a 
criticism, however, which is apt to prove ingenious rather 
than reliable. In 1892 Mr. George Napier published a 
further w r ork — The Homes and Haunts of Alfred, Lord 
Tennyson, an artistic and literary success. In the same 
year Dr. A. H. Japp contributed to Mr. A. H. Miles's Poets 
and Poetry of the Century, a study of the late Laureate's 
life which will be of permanent value to the Tennysonian 
student. And, last of the list, we may mention that which 
is perhaps the most valuable — Tennyson/ana, by R. H. 
Shepherd. This little volume contains a rich collection of 
naked facts, and a wealth of bibliographical notes. The 
second edition (1879) is the better and more reliable. It 
was thus that Tennyson literature multiplied, and that 
incrustation of w r ork, which always settles about a great 
name, began to gather round the Laureate. It is safe to 
say that, within another decade, the number of such books 
will have been doubled. 

In the months that followed the production of ' The 
Foresters ' Tennyson was at Farringford. The early spring 
found him ailing, but in June he was among the Channel 
Isles, cruising in Colonel Crozier's yacht Assegai, while 
Haslemere was being redecorated for his return in the later 
summer. In company with his son, Mr. Hallam Tennyson, 
he visited, during the third w T eek in June, the principal 
places of interest in Guernsey and Jersey, the family return- 
ing to Haslemere on June 30th. 

The late summer of 1892 was spent at Aldworth, whither 
several distinguished visitors found their way — the Duke of 
Argyll during July, Dr. Jowett in September. During the 
former month the Laureate paid a hurried visit to London, 



THE CLOSING YEARS 239 

and within a few days of his return to Surrey it was 
whispered that Mr. Irving intended to produce 'Becket' 
early in the following year. The suggestion seemed at first 
an improbable one; but any doubt was removed by Mr. 
Irving's own announcement of the project on the last night 
of his summer season at the Lyceum. A few weeks later it 
was reported that Tennyson was correcting the proofs of a 
new volume, a collection of poems to be entitled ' Akbar's 
Dream/ The end of his eighty-third year was evidently to 
find the poet full of energy and expectation. His brain 
was astir, and his interest in passing events was unabated. 
The Shelley Centenary, which was celebrated at Horsham 
on August 4th, was rendered more notable by the ornament 
of his name as President ; the General Election elicited 
from him a violent but characteristic utterance, deploring 
the possibility of Home Rule. ' I love Mr. Gladstone/ he 
said, 'but hate his present Irish policy/ Gladstone and 
Tennyson ! The two names fall together with a singular 
fitness. Each numbering his eighty years and over ; each 
endowed with almost unshaken vigour and mental power, 
each holding his audience in his age with an even keener 
affection, and drawing it into a still more loyal adherence 
than he had commanded in the dawn of his popularity 
and power. Par nobile ducum, whom the least sympathetic 
opponent cannot but admire. 

With the approaching production of 'Becket,' and the 
publication of ' Akbar's Dream,' it seemed as though the 
winter of 1892 would be a memorable season in Tennyson's 
life. But for him the winter was never to come. 

The rumours of these new movements were but fresh in 
our midst, when a graver report centred our attention upon 
Aldworth. Tennyson was ill. An attack of influenza had 
become complicated by gout, and his condition was con- 
sidered serious. So wrapped in peace and secrecy was the 
home at Haslemere that the Laureate had been ill for five 
days before the news reached the ears of the neighbouring 
villagers. On Monday, October the 3rd, it was known in 
London that Tennyson was sinking ; and, though he rallied 
for one night, there was never any real accession of strength : 
the end was merely a question of time. By Wednesday 



240 ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON 

night the doctors had given up hope ; and very peacefully 
and at ease, his room bathed in a flood of moonlight, he 
passed away about half-past one on the morning of 
Thursday, October the 6th. His family were about him at 
his death. 

It is only after our losses that we come to understand 
their extent, and it is probably reserved for the next few 
years to prove to us all that English literature has suffered 
in Tennyson's death. One thing we all appreciated with 
the first whisper of the news : the greatest national poet 
that England has produced in the present century, the 
sweetest singer, save only Shelley, that has charmed us for 
a hundred years, has passed away. And yet there should 
be little room for weak, effeminate lament. He died, as 
every creative genius would surely choose to die, in fulness 
of years and honour — almost, as it seemed, in the recrud- 
escence and plenitude of his power. With the cycle of his 
fourscore years completed, he could sport among his 
foresters in Sherwood with no less spontaneity than he 
lavished on his garden-games with the Lilian and Rosalind 
of his boyhood. The capacity and the variety of his genius 
remained un withered by age, unstaled by custom, rich and 
enchanting to the last. 'Truly one of the great of the 
earth.' It was so his friend described him in the first 
blush of his promise ; it is so that he appears to us to-day. 
And the sincere regret and sympathy with which England 
sets his name upon the roll of her dead immortals must, of a 
surety, be softened by a sense of a life lived to its comple- 
tion, and a work perfected. 

' Twilight, and evening bell, 
And after that the dark ! 
And may there be no sadness of farewell 
When I embark. 

For tho' from out our bourne of Time and Place 

The flood may bear me far, 
I hope to see my Pilot face to face, 

When I have crost the bar.' 

Within a fortnight of the impressive ceremony at West- 
minster Abbey, Tennyson's new volume, the proofs of which 
had received his own correction, was issued to the public. 



THE CLOSING YEARS 241 

' Akbars Dream ' remained one of the principal riches of 
the book, which, however, took its title from ' The Death of 
CEnone,' a poem which was almost characteristic of the 
author's prime. Rumour whispers that this latest volume 
is not necessarily the last, that much remains to be printed, 
if the late Laureate's literary executor thinks well. But, 
whatever may follow, ' The Death of QEnone ' must be the 
last selection to have passed under its author's own review, 
the last utterance made with his full and final authority. 
As such it acquires a tender, personal value above the 
worth and merit of its literary performance. It carries with 
it the sentiment of a legacy, a gift in whose presence our 
thanks are hushed, our criticism silent. 

It was not to be expected that there should be any new note 
sounded : no new note was desirable. The surest consola- 
tion in loss was the sense of an ideal unimpaired, a creed 
unshaken to the end. It was best to find the Master, after 
many days, singing with the hope and enthusiasm of youth, 
a little calmed, a little resigned, but inspired still by the 
old creed, the old cry of ' Onward.' It was good, too, to 
meet him with an eye undimmed, with the same clear sight 
for beauty, the same unfailing power of fixing the scene 
upon his page. The poetry of his youth scarcely contained 
a truer picture than that of GEnone's desolation. Once 
more the surroundings harmonise with the sentiment : once 
more the detail, vividly condensed, is given with the old 
skill and unlaboured fidelity. 

* CEnone sat within the cave from out 
Whose ivy-matted mouth she used to gaze 
Down at the Troad ; but the gocdly view 
Was now one blank, and all the serpent vines 
Which on the touch of heavenly feet had risen, 
And gliding thro' the branches overbower'd 
The naked three, were wither'd long ago. 
And thro' the sunless winter morning-mist 
In silence wept upon the flowerless earth. 

And while she stared at those dead cords that ran 
Dark thro' the mist, and linking tree to tree, 
But once were gayer than a dawning sky 
With many a pendent bell and fragrant star, 
Her Past became her Present.' 

Q 



242 ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON 

Or again, where Paris reappears, every word is a touch of 
colour : 

* Paris, no longer beauteous as a God, 
Struck by a poison'd arrow in the right, 
Lame, crooked, reeling, livid, thro' the mist 
Rose, like a wraith of his dead self, and moan'd.' 

It would be hard to trace any failure of strength here : not 
only is the picture complete, but the full, rich melody of 
the metre is still unbroken. It is even fuller and richer in 
' Saint Telemachus : ' 

' And once a flight of shadowy fighters crost 
The disk, and once, he thought, a shape with wings 
Came sweeping by him, and pointed to the West, 
And at his ear he heard a whisper " Rome," 
And in his heart he cried, " The call of God ! " 
And call'd arose, and, slowly plunging down 
Thro' that disastrous glory, set his face 
By waste and field and town of alien tongue, 
Following a hundred sunsets, and the sphere 
Of westward-wheeling stars ; and every dawn 
Struck from him his own shadow on to Rome.' 

It is the voice of Tennyson. One critic may complain that 
there is little novelty in the volume, another may fear that 
it will scarcely add to his fame. But the one indisputable 
fact remains : there is no living singer who could sing as he, 
even in his last melody. The haunting echo of the metre, 
as we end the poem, and listen to the rhythm surging 
through our brain, sweeps back with a desolate ' Never 
more ! ' There is left us but the gratitude that we have 
so much to read and re-read over and over again. 

The contents of the volume, other than those in the 
peculiarly Tennysonian metre, are, perhaps, less permanent. 
' Charity ' belongs to the class of which * The Flight ' is a 
leading example, and it is even more homely than its pre- 
decessors. Perhaps it was an earlier work, belonging, as 
Mr. H. D. Traill has suggested, to the ' Enoch Arden ' 
period ; a cycle which can never be a favourite with the 
Laureate's admirers. 'The Bandit's Death' has a more 
romantic environment, but it lacks dramatic fire. There 
is far more spirit and eagerness in the ' The Dreamer : ' 



THE CLOSING YEARS 243 

' Moaning your losses, Earth, 
Heart-weary and overdone ! 
But all's well that ends well, 
Whirl, and follow the sun.' 

c The Churchwarden and the Curate ' is as admirable a 
sketch in dialect as any of the older favourites. One feels 
how much Trench would have appreciated its quality. 

' Akbar's Dream ' gives prominence to a tendency, already 
sufficiently indicated in this study, which separates the poet 
from sympathy with outward ceremonial, and centres his 
soul upon the perfection and pursuit of the ideal : 

' What are forms ? 
Fair garments, plain or rich, and fitting close 
Or flying looselier, warm'd but by the heart 
Within them, moved but by the living limb, 
And cast aside, when old, for newer.' 

Forms and creeds, he holds, will one day be merged, like 
Plato's sciences, in the one ideal truth, the crown of know- 
ledge and love. 

1 Neither mourn if human creeds be lower than the heart's desire ! 
Thro' the gates that bar the distance comes a gleam of what is 

higher. 
Wait till Death has flung them open, when the man will make 

the Maker 
Dark no more with human hatreds in the glare of deathless fire ! 

It was his first message : it remains his last. Amid social 
change and political doubt he continued true to the old 
ambition, the slow, steady progress to universal union. 

1 Call me not so often back, 
Silent voices of the dead,' 

he cries. There is to be no delay, no regret, no hesita- 
tion. 

* On, and always on ! ' 



CHAPTER XV 

THE VOICE OF THE AGE 

The period we have traversed in following this serene and 
unblemished life from the cradle to the grave is the longest 
which the biographer of any great English poet has to en- 
counter. Wordsworth was venerable in what seemed 
extreme old age ; but Tennyson had several years of 
public honour and private happiness before him when 
he crossed the limit of the duration of Wordsworth's life. 
As Victor Hugo to France, so Tennyson has been to 
England in the nineteenth century the symbol of longevity, 
the crowning proof that not all whom the gods love dearly 
die young. The long life of a foremost leader of thought 
gives stability to literature, and it is to this duration of 
Tennyson's existence that we have owed, to no small 
measure, the durability of the poetic tradition of our age. 
Although it is a commonplace that we live fast in this nine- 
teenth century of ours, and that men change their tastes 
and opinions in it as they change their clothes, critical 
judgment and poetic taste have been singularly, and per- 
haps unprecedently, stable. A man born in the early part 
of Elizabeth's reign, and living to the age of the late 
Laureate, would have seen poetry spring out of barbarism 
into perfect form and beauty, would have marked the rising 
and setting of Marlowe, of Shakespeare, of Spenser, the 
pre-eminence of the drama and its utter decline, would 
have experienced a total revolution in style and taste, and 
would have listened to the first accents of Dryden and 
Butler. Another, born when Pope was sharpening his 
fiery arrows, would have died leaving poetry in the hands 
of Coleridge and Shelley. No such radical change takes 
place when one great and unchallenged master, productive 
through his whole length of years, holds the critics and the 
public with an eye that time does not fatigue or dim. 

244 



THE VOICE OF THE AGE 245 

Hence, though poets have been many, and their inspira- 
tion genuine, not one but has in some degree acknowledged 
in his style his allegiance to Tennyson. If one exception 
be sought to this sweeping statement, it may be found in 
Robert Browning, in whom, though he owed to Tennyson 
in some degree the scheme of his dramatic monologues, it 
would be perhaps paradoxical to claim much or anything 
of the Tennysonian spirit. But Mrs. Browning met with 
the young genius of Tennyson at the outset of her career, and 
his masculine accents fascinated and made her captive. His 
infinite variety of metre and spontaneity of music struck 
the first haunting echo that woke into new tones in those 
songs of unexampled melody with which Mr. Swinburne 
assailed the ears of his contemporaries. His rich sense of 
colour and his delicacy of delineation were elaborated in 
the over-burdened pictures of the pre-Raphaelites — in 
Rossetti and Mr. William Morris. The grand, full march 
of his blank verse is heard in the epic movement of 
Matthew Arnold ; its softer cadences, in their luxuriousness 
and their fluidity, have only too plainly inspired Sir Edward 
Arnold and Mr. Lewis Morris. The domestic simplicity 
and impassioned erotic analysis of Mr. Coventry Patmore 
take forms that no predecessor of Tennyson would have 
employed. His keen observation of natural phenomena, 
and his sympathy with animal life, stirred a tenderness for 
' helpless forms of fur and wings/ which was to develop in 
the lyrics of Mr. Edmund Gosse. The more dramatic and 
vivid of his ballads thunder, with a new vehemence, under 
the roll of Mr. Rudyard Kipling's 'The English Flag.' 
His polished, jewelled style has lent itself as a model for 
the * crystalline completeness ' of Mr. William Watson's 
clean-cut epigrams. 

Almost every later poet has, half imperceptibly, and as 
a rule unconsciously, breathed in the atmosphere of the 
Tennysonian spirit. The elements of that spirit, complex 
in their separate forms, melt into one another simply and 
harmoniously. They fall into three main classes. First, 
those emotions which refer outwards to inanimate nature. 
Second, those which refer outwards to the poet's fellow- 
creatures. Third, those which refer inwards and become 



246 ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON 

introspective. The briefest consideration will give us some 
idea of the nature and interrelation of these component 
parts of the spirit of Tennyson's verse. 

The poet stands in a closer and more intimate relation 
to inanimate nature than did any of his predecessors. 
Keats had prepared the way for him by a wealth of colour, 
and a keen eye ever dwelling on the object, apt to observe 
every detail of the scene, and to reproduce it with a luxurious 
fidelity. Wordsworth had prepared the way by a love of 
seclusion, a passion for the solitude of riverside and wood, 
and a studious affection for the books which he could read 
in the running brooks, the sermons in the stones. Crabbe 
had prepared the way by the harmony with which his 
domestic idylls were attuned to their humble surroundings, 
by his sense of the fitness of restraint and modulation. 
But the way was prepared not by one, but by all : Tenny- 
son took something from each, and added much of his 
own. There were the richness of Keats's imagery in the 
early lyrics, the domestic tenderness of Crabbe in * Dora,' 
the rustic pathos of Wordsworth in 'The May Queen.' 
But in all these poems there was something that was 
neither of Keats, nor of Wordsworth, nor of Crabbe. 
There was a refined subtlety of touch, an individual turn of 
expression, and, above all, an even more sympathetic atti- 
tude towards nature. Often and often in Tennyson the 
scene is the man, the surroundings reflect the situation. It 
is so with the lonesome melancholy of ' Tears, Idle Tears ; ' 
it is so with the Norland wind that pipes ' Oriana ' down 
the sea ; it is pre-eminently so with the drowsy sensuous- 
ness of the ' Lotos land.' Before the first failure of the 
order in ' Merlin and Vivien ' 

1 A storm was coming, but the winds were still.' 

The morning of ' The Last Tournament ' breaks ' with a 
wet wind blowing.' The night of Enoch's death 

' There came so loud a calling of the sea 
That all the houses in the haven rang.' 

And, as Arthur falls, the whole surroundings harmonise 
with the tragedy : 



THE VOICE OF THE AGE 247 

1 And there, that day when the great light of heaven 
Burn'd at its lowest in the rolling year, 
On the waste sand by the waste sea they closed. 
Nor ever yet had Arthur fought a fight 
Like this last, dim, weird battle of the west. 
A deathwhite mist slept over sand and sea : 
Whereof the chill, to him who breathed it, drew 
Down with his blood, till all his heart was cold 
With formless fear.' 

Instances could be multiplied ; but enough has been said 
to show the character of the sympathy. Some of the 
sentiment is Wordsworth's, but the peculiar delicacy which 
fits every mood to its surroundings is all Tennyson's own. 
It is one of the most individual and artistic of his con- 
tributions to the development of poetry. 

The second element is that which carries the poet out 
of himself into a regard and sympathy for his fellow-men. 
Of this, one variety is personal, the other dramatic. In his 
own relation to his age Tennyson has turned but little, to 
the right hand or to the left, during the sixty years and 
more for which he has moved among his brothers. His 
attitude towards politics was the same at the General 
Election of 1892 as it was in the earlier struggles of the 
Reform Bill. He was for progress, but the progress by 
degrees. The intensity of ambition, which became in- 
articulate in the poets of the revolution, was harmonised 
into a broader enthusiasm, akin to the more settled tempera- 
ment of the period. The placid immobility, which threatened 
to stagnate in the verse of the reaction, was inspired by the 
impetus of a spirit of progress. And so, with no violent 
convulsion, with no immature energy, the old and the new 
spirits w r ere merged into one another. And here was their 
philosophy : 

1 Some cry " Quick," and some cry " Slow," 
But while the hills remain, 
Up hill u Too-Slow " will need the whip, 
Down hill " Too-Quick " the chain. ' 

The dominant sentiment is one of steady development, 
' conserving the hopes of man.' An unenlightened affection 
for old forms and ceremonies is felt to be no less fatal to 
the state than a maddened yearning for unconsidered 



248 ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON 

changes. There must be a development, but a develop- 
ment by degrees, steady and certain. The unnatural 
emancipation of women is satirised in ' The Princess ; ? 
careless inactivity is assailed in ' The Fleet ; ' ignorant 
revolution rebuked in ' Freedom ' and c Locksley Hall 
Sixty Years After.' His is an ideal of moral and physical 
strength, perceived but restrained ; his hero is the man 
who, being strong, is merciful ; who walks in the middle 
way, — a law to himself. 

' lie who only rules by terror, 
Doeth grievous wrong, 
Deep as Hell I count his error.' 

It is the ideal of Wordsworth, who traces the happy warrior 
in the man, who is 

1 By objects, which might force the soul to abate 
Iler feeling, rendered more compassionate ; 
Is placable — because occasions rise 

So often that demand such sacrifice.' 

But though the ideal is strength restrained, the sympathy 
is wider. It embraces every class of mankind, high and 
low, thinker and worker. It hastens to take upon itself — 
to try to comprehend — the emotions, the hopes, and fears, 
and aspirations of every variety of mind ; and in this 
endeavour the poet becomes dramatic. Where he assumes 
not only the dramatic instinct, but the stage form, he is in 
the main Elizabethan. The dialogue of his dramas is 
essentially Shakespearian : the construction owes its diffi- 
culties to the same source. But Tennyson is most individual, 
and — by a strange union of genius with originality — actually 
most dramatic, in the dramatic utterances which take the 
form of poems, and are not strictly drama at all. None of 
his predecessors has used the dramatic monologue with his 
energy and directness : and it is in this class of poetry that 
he is supreme. 

This dramatic element merges itself continually into the 
introspective element, till at times the two are with difficulty 
separable. For this reason the dramatic touch of ' Maud ' 
was misunderstood, and ' Despair ' bitterly condemned. 



THE VOICE OF THE AGE 249 

The two elements, indeed, are often one. Throwing 
himself into the character he is portraying, adopting the 
emotion and the habit of thought, the poet then turns upon 
himself and analyses his assumed condition. He is at 
once dramatic and psychological. There is a tinge of 
Shelley in ' Maud/ for to him is due some of the lingering- 
love for passion, and the charm of morbid melancholy. 
But the most of it is Tennyson's : and it is, perhaps, his 
most characteristic work. For it shows, with a perfection 
of detail, the union of the dramatic and the psychological 
elements of his nature. 

This short review of the characteristics which go to 
make the Tennysonian spirit has helped us, at the same 
time, to trace its development from the poetry of the 
preceding generation. Born into an age of reaction, 
Tennyson woke his world into new life. Each new im- 
pulse caught the spirit of the old, but the hand was stronger 
and the touch individual. And so, attuned to the sentiment 
of the age, the great surging rhythm of English poetry flows, 
from Shakespeare, through Tennyson, to inspire the singers 
that shall come hereafter. Tennyson stands, as it were, 
midway upon a mountain, catching the echoes from afar, 
and passing on the melody to his followers on the hillside. 
Every now and again such a poet takes his stand upon the 
height, and preserves to us the spirit of our song, so that 
the new and the old are never altogether out of harmony. 
And it is to these that we owe the continuity and perfection 
of the national literature. 

But Tennyson's attitude is not merely preservative and 
proleptic : he stands in an even closer relation to his 
contemporaries. 

In an earlier chapter we have noticed that two assistant 
factors go to the making of literary success — genius and 
opportunity. To the highest form of literary triumph 
another talent is needed, — the talent that reflects and 
represents the age in which it lives and moves. Scarcely 
any period has proved so sterile as to lack all share of 
literary activity ; but it frequently happens that many years 
elapse without the sound of an actually representative 
voice to find utterance for the fears and hopes of its 



25o ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON 

generation. The thoroughly representative voice is stirred 
into life by some vigorous and vital movement in its 
environment : it is only in an age of change and develop- 
ment that one man can take upon him the habit of a 
people. But when once such a voice has spoken, the 
truest history of the age remains in the record of its 
utterance. The naked colligation of facts, the elaborate 
synthesis of comparison, are but the skeleton of history : 
the heart of the age beats in its truly representative poet. 
And it is in Tennyson that we find the quintessence of the 
aims and aspirations of the second half of the nineteenth 
century. In Tennyson's poetry deep calls out to deep at 
the meeting of two great waters, the poetry of the earlier 
and later periods of the cycle. But even more distinctly 
there is heard in Tennyson's poetry the steady, prolonged 
undertone of the age which it reflected, the moving music 
to which the history of the era was written. 

The multitude of phrases and sentiments culled from 
Tennyson for daily quotation proves how intimately his 
philosophy has entered into the life of the people for whom 
he sang. Except Shakespeare, and perhaps Pope, no 
English poet is so full of epigrams which stand as laws 
of life. He has caught the spirit of the people and crystal- 
lised it into literature, showing the age, in the process, a 
faithful similitude of its own soul. 

The spirit of the age was analytical, psychological, 
dramatic. It was an age marked by a struggle between 
doubt and faith, from which faith rose conqueror. Every 
effort of the contest was recorded in Tennyson's verse. 
' The Two Voices,' ' The Vision of Sin,' and * In Memoriam,' 
trace an introspective analysis, seeking after the truth, whose 
final word is given to the unquestioning faith of 'Crossing 
the Bar.' The 'one clear call' finds the poet ready and 
fearless — 

' I hope to see my Pilot face to face, 
When I have crost the bar.' 

The age was not only introspectively analytic, it was 
dramatic. Its spirit found vent, not in thought alone, 
but in action ; and the active side of the age had its 



THE VOICE OF THE AGE 251 

literary counterpart in ' Maud,' and the more dramatic 
< Ballads.' 

The task of the poet was to sift and combine the lesser 
voices of antagonism, to separate the tithe of truth from 
the mass of falsehood, and to fuse the many elements into 
one perfect amalgam. When this combination was effected, 
the true spirit of the age was discovered. Therefore it is 
that Tennyson is never with the revolutionist, nor yet with 
the dullard ; he is never in the forefront, but always among 
the first to enter the stormed citadel. As each bold theory 
of science was established by evidence, he accepted it in 
a mitigated form. As each new political change broadened 
down to the level of calm freedom, he welcomed it as a 
wholesome precedent. Never advancing rashly, he never 
lagged behind ; the crowd of progress, as it stormed by, 
found him — not, as Plato's philosopher, hiding in the 
shadow of the wall — but following steadily by its side. 
Only, while the crowd wandered from the highway by 
devious alleys to find the true path after many days, he 
waited to follow, till it was once more safe upon its journey. 

1 Our little systems have their day ; 

They have their day and cease to be : 
They are but broken lights of thee, 
And thou, O Lord, art more than they.' 

Truth, he knew, lay not in instant acceptation of the un- 
proven hypothesis, nor in blind adherence to outward form 
and ceremonial. With a calm strength and unbiassed 
judgment he took what good the age had to give, and 
threw aside the evil. And having proved the goodness of 
it, he proclaimed it from the housetops. Such was the 
poet : such too, was the man. The truest study of his 
life will be inspired by a study of his work. No sketch, 
no outline of facts and' dates can give us the man as he 
stands pictured between the familiar green covers of the 
collected edition. All the principal characteristics are 
mirrored there. The calm energy of will, the troubled 
but unbroken faith, the wide-souled sympathy with man- 
kind, the scorn of things little and of low repute, the 
reticence towards publicity, the love of love, — all these 



252 ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON 

things were written in Tennyson's poetry. There we find 
the record of a life that followed no party-cry, was seduced 
by no specious argument from the open road of loyalty — 
that sided with no theological oppression, nor sympathised 
with any narrowness of sect or school. It was a life that 
chose to stand apart from the hue and cry of the age, that 
walked in fallentis semita vita by paths of seclusion and 
peace. But the quiet way was not solitary. It ran, step 
by step, beside the high-road of the century, within hearing 
of the struggling multitude. And watching the men, his 
* brothers, men the workers/ marking every aspect of their 
fight for existence, sympathising with them, crying to them, 
now with the fiery energy of a Son of Thunder, now with 
the tenderer accents of a Son of Consolation, Tennyson 
was a ceaseless influence to his age. He showed the toilers 
what, in the excitement of the burden and heat of the day, 
they could not see for themselves, — the end for which they 
were toiling, and the cause of their momentary failure. 
He found comfort for their disappointment, and sympathy 
for their success. He was the historian of their life, and 
the prophet of their hope. 

And in the future, when the poetry of Tennyson ceases 
to represent the inspiration of the moment, when new hopes 
and new ambitions are firing new poets with ardour, his 
voice will not be without regard. For it is the voice of 
his age, an age which, with all its troubles, its doubts, and 
its possibilities, found for consolation one only faith, for 
assurance one only God. When, beyond these voices, the 
history of that age comes to be written, the record of the 
surest utterance of its heart of hearts, of the clearest reflec- 
tion of its secret soul, will remain immortal in the poetry 
of Alfred Tennyson. 



INDEX 



' Academy, The,' Mr. Edmund Gosse 
on ' The Lover's Tale ' in, 53 ; Re- 
view of ' Queen Mary ' by Mr. Andrew- 
Lang in, 180 ; Review of ' Harold ' 
by Mr. John Addington Symonds 
in, 180. 

' Achilles over the Trench,' 189. 

' Adonais ' of Shelley, published in 
' Transactions,' 57. 

'Afterthought,' re-named 'Literary 
Squabbles,' 83. 

' Akbar's Dream,' 243. 

Albert, Prince, occasional visits of, to 
Farringford, 126. 

Aid worth, Tennysons go to live at, 
160, 166. 

Alford, Henry, his opinion of Arthur 
Hall am, 21 ; an early friend of 
Tennyson, 22 ; Tennyson reads 
1 Hesperides ' to, 29. 

Allingham, William, on Alexander 
Smith in ' The Athenaeum,' 112. 

' Anacreontics,' 39. 

' Ancient Sage, The,' 155. 

Anonymous Club, The, Literary and 
Philosophical Club, 62 ; dinner in- 
vitation from Landor to Tennyson 
quoted, 62. 

' Antony to Cleopatra,' 16. 

Apostles, The, Literary Club at 
Trinity, Cambridge, 22 ; Tenny- 
son's mention of, in ' In Memo- 
nam,' 22; Tennyson on 'Ghosts,' 

Archer, Mr. William, on ' The Cup ' 
in his ' English Dramatists of To- 
day,' 199. 

Argyll, Duke of, his visits to Tenny- 
son, 165, 238. 

' Armageddon, The Battle of,' Tenny- 
son's poem on, 24. 

Arnold, Sir Edwin, Tennyson's influ- 
ence on, 245. 



Arnold, Matthew, Tennyson's influ- 
ence on, 245. 

Arthur, Tennyson's character of, 131. 

Ashburton, Lady Harriet, Tennyson's 
speech to, 125. 

' Athenaeum, The,' reviews ' Timbuc- 
too,' 24; on the Laureateship, 94 ; 
its praise of ' Gareth and Lynette,' 
170. 

' Attempts at Classic Metres in Quan- 
tity,' in ' Cornhill Magazine,' 151. 

' Aylmer's Field,' story supplied by 
Mr. Woolner, 153 ; considered, 153. 

Aytoun, Professor W\ E. , parody 
quoted, 73. 

' Balin and BalaN ' considered, 222. 

' Ballads,' published 1880, 193 ; con- 
tents, 193 ; considered, 193. 

' Bandit's Death, The,' 242 

Barnes, Rev. William, his verses in 
the Dorsetshire tongue, 156. 

Barton, Bernard, in 'The Gem,' 38 ; 
FitzGerald's letter to, 61. 

Bateman, Miss (Mrs. Crowe), as 
Queen Mary, 179. 

' Becket,' 1884, considered, 215. 

Beddoes, Thomas Lovell, Tennyson's 
approval of, 113. 

Bedivere, character of, 136. 

Beere, Mrs. Bernard, ' The Promise 
of May' produced at the Globe 
Theatre by, 205. 

Berry, Sir Graham, ' The Fleet ' sug- 
gested by speech of, 225. 

Blackmore, Sir Richard, his poems 
on the Arthurian Legend, 127. 

1 Blackwood's Magazine,' Christopher 
North on 'Poems, chiefly Lyrical,' 
36 ; notice of Poems published 
1832, 50 ; Review on ' Maud,' 116 ; 
' Sir Tray,' an Arthurian legend by 
General Hamlcy in, 203. 
253 



54 



INDEX 



Blakesley, J. W. , an eaily friend of 
Tennyson, 22 ; his opinion of 
1 Poems, ehiefly Lyrical,' 36. 

Bond, Mr. Acton, as Robin Hood in 
copyright performance of ' The 
Foresters,' 234. 

Bors, Sir, character of, 136. 

Boxley, Tennysons at, 61. 

Boyle, Hon. Mrs., ' Rosa Rosarum,' 
by, 215. 

Boyle, Miss Mary, ' Progress of 
Spring,' dedicated to, 61 ; Alfred 
Tennyson's friendship for, 61. 

' Break, Break, Break,' origin of, 6. 

' Britons, guard your own,' 108. 

Browning, Elizabeth Barrett, intro- 
duction to Tennyson, 72 ; her 
opinion of Tennyson, 72 ; voice of 
the new era, jj ; ' The Athenasum ' 
suggested, for Laureateship, 94 ; 
' The Poet and the Woodlouse,' 
parody by Mr. Swinburne on, 203 ; 
Tennyson's influence on, 245. 

Browning, Robert, voice of the new 
era, yy ; his name mentioned for 
the Laureateship, 94 ; Tennyson 
reading 'Maud' to, 124; dinner 
at Mr. Palgrave's, 157 ; reading 
of ' Gareth and Lynette' to, by 
Tennyson, 170 ; his dedication to 
Tennyson, 180 ; parodied by Mr. 
Swinburne, 203 ; his contribution 
to pamphlet in connection with 
Shakespearian Exhibition, 215 ; his 
letter to Tennyson on his eightieth 
birthday, 228 ; death of, 229. 

' Burial of Love, The,' 35. 
Byron, Lord, death of, 13 ; early 
influence on Alfred Tennyson, 17, 
18. 

CADNEY'S ' Village School,' 10. 

Caine, Mr. Hall, Letter of Tennyson 
to, 211. 

Cambridge, Trinity College, Frede- 
rick Tennyson at, 14 ; Alfred and 
Charles at, 21 ; Tennyson's visits 
to, 166, 225. 

Camden Town, Tennyson's lodgings 
at, 64. 

Campbell, J. Dykes, first proofs of 
'Enoch Arden' volume in posses- 
sion of, 157 ; on Coleridge's copy 
of Sonnets by Charles Tennyson 
Turner, 190. 



Campbell, Thomas, 76. 

1 Captain, The,' 161. 

Carlyle, Jane Welsh, opinion on 
Tennyson, 74 ; an anecdote, 81. 

Carlyle, Thomas, friend of Alfred 
Tennyson, 59 ; member of ' The 
Anonymous Club,' 62; description 
of Tennyson, 74 ; evening spent 
with, 79 ; introduction of Sir John 
Simeon to Tennyson by, 80 ; in 
Cumberland, 96 ; at Malvern, 108 ; 
his action in defence of Eyre, 160 ; 
quoted on ' The Revenge,' 190. 

' Charge of the Heavy Brigade, The,' 
dedicated to General Hamley, 
203. 

' Charge of the Light Brigade, The,' 
1000 copies distributed among 
troops before Sebastopol, 115 ; its 
popularity, 115. 

' Charity,' 242. 

' Check every outflash,' 40. 

Cheltenham, Tennyson at, 80 ; 
Charles Tennyson's death at, 190. 

'Children's Hospital, In the,' Emmie 
quoted, 7. 

' Christian Signal, The,' 34. 

' Christopher North, To,' 36. 

Church, Rev. A. J. , ' In the Laureate's 
Country,' by, 238. 

' Churchwarden and Curate, The,' 

243- 
' City Child, The,' in ' St. Nicholas,' 

195- 

Clark, Mr. W. G. , Tennyson's dinner 
with, 166. 

Clough, Arthur Hugh, on Tennyson, 
73 ; Tennyson reads ' Guinevere ' 
to, 126 ; his visit to the Pyrenees, 
148 ; his walk with Tennyson, 149 ; 
death at Florence, 149. 

Cock, The, Tavern, 63. 

Colenso, Bishop, Tennyson's letter 
to, 112. 

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, on ' Poems, 
chiefly Lyrical,' 32; his influence 
on Tennyson, yy ; his copy of 
sonnets of Charles Tennyson Turner 
of 1880, 190. 

' Columbus,' Controversy on, 194. 

' Come not when I am dead,' 105. 

' Coming of Arthur, The,' 127. 

' Contemporary Review,' ' The Last 
Tournament ' in, 169. 

Coppee, M. Francois, 146. 



INDEX 



1 Cornhil] Magazine, The,' Tennyson's 
'Tithonus' in, Feb. i860, 148; 
Thaekeray on Tennyson's ' Wel- 
come ' in, 150 ; ' Attempts at Classie 
Metres in Quantity ' in, 151. 

' Court Journal/ ' Epitaph on Duchess 
of Kent ' printed in, 151. 

Cowell, Professor E. B., 126. 

Crabbe, George, his influence on 
Tennyson, 77. 

' Cranford,' quoted on Tennyscn, 72. 

' Crossing the Bar,' 230, 250. 

Crazier, Colonel, Tennyscn in the 
Assegai yacht of, 238. 

Cunningham, Allan, 35. 

' Cup, The,' produced at the Lyceum 
by Mr. Irving, 196 ; considered, 
196 ; Mr. William Archer in ' En- 
glish Dramatists of To-day ' on, 
199. 

DAA, Professor Ludwig K., descrip- 
tion of Tennyson's visit to Norway, 
170. 

' Daisy, The,' Tennyson's journey to 
ltalv recounted in, 106 ; considered, 
116' 

Daly, Mr. Augustin, visit to England, 
232 ; ' The Foresters ' produced in 
New York by, 232. 

' Darling Room,' 48. 

Dawson, Mr. S. E., study of ' The 
Princess ' by, 237. 

1 Dead Prophet, The,' 221. 

' Decade, The,' an Oxford debating 
society discussion on Tennyson, 73. 

' Defence of Lucknow, The,' 190. 

1 Demeter and Persephone,' consid- 
ered, 229. 

' Democratic Review, The,' Edgar 
Allan Poe on Tennyson in, 66. 

Denmark, King of, Mr. Gladstone 
and Tennyson entertained by, 212 ; 
luncheon-party on the yacht, 212. 

' Despair,' printed in ' The Nineteenth 
Century,' 202 ; Swinburne's travesty 
'Disgust' on, 202; opinions on, 
203 ; Mr. Thomas Walker's lecture 
on, 204 ; considered, 204 ; con- 
sidered, 222. 

Dickens, Charles, admiration for 
Tennyson, 66. 

'Disgust,' travesty on 'Despair,' by 
A. C. Swinburne in ' The Fort- 
nightly Review,' 202. 



Dobell, Sydney, at Malvern with 
Tennyson, 108 ; in defence of 
' Maud,' 119 ; account of Tennyson 
at Farringford, 126. 

Donne, W. B. , Trench's letter to, on 
Tennyson, 25; FitzGerald's letter 
to, on ' In Memoriam,' 80. 

' Dora,' 70. 

Doyle, Francis H., dinner-party at 
Mr. Palgrave's, 157. 

' Dream of Fair Women, A,' 47. 

' Dreamer, The,' 242. 

Drew, Mr. John, as Robin Hood in 
' The Foresters,' 232. 

Dryden, John, his meditated "Arthur- 
iad, 127. 

Dufferin, Lord, ' Helen's Tower ' 
printed privately by, 149 ; his kind- 
ness to Lionel Tennyson, 223. 

' Dualisms,' 34. 

Dyke, Mr. H. J. van, ' Poetry of 
Tennyson ' by, 237. 



' Eagle, The,' 105. 

' Edinburgh Review,' on ' Maud,' 
116. 

' Edwin Morris,' 105. 

' EgyP^ Frederick Tennyson's G r eek 
Ode, 20. 

1 1865-1866,' in ' Good Words,' sup- 
pressed, printed in decorative frame 
by John Leighton, 166. 

Emerson, Ralph Waldo, his opinion 
of Tennyson, 67. 

' Englishman's Magazine, The,' Ar- 
thur Hallam's Essay on Tennyson, 
32 ; Tennyson's contribution to, 
August 1831, 38. 

' Enid and Nimue,' published for 
private circulation, 125. 

' Enoch Arden,' volume 186.4, I 5 I J 
contents, 151 ; title of first proofs, 
157 ; considered, 153. 

' Epitaph on Duchess of Kent,' 151. 

' Era, The,' notice of ' Queen Mary' 
in, 179. 

' Every Saturday ,' ' Lucretius,' pub- 
lished in, 164. 

'Examiner, The,' verses 'To , ; 

' You might have won the Poet's 
name,' published in, 91 ; ' Hands 
all Round,' in, 108; uncourteous 
comment 'On a Welcome to Alex- 
andre vna,' 171. 



5 6 



INDEX 



Eyre, E. J., at Louth Grammar 
School, 18 ; his suppression of the 
Blacks in Jamaica, 160 ; prosecuted 
for cruelty, 160. 

Faithfull, Miss Emily, Tennyson's 
verse 'The Sailor Boy' in 'Victoria 
Regia,' 148. 

' Falcon, The,' produced at St. 
James's Theatre, Dec. 18, 1879, by 
Messrs. Hare and Kendal, 191 ; 
considered, 191. 

' Far, far away,' 230. 

Farringford, in, 124, 126, 145, 158, 
165, 218, 232, 238. 

' Fa tima,' 46, 77. 

Ferdinand of Spain, rebellion under, 

37- 

Ferrier, Miss, ' The Inheritance,' 65. 

Feuillet, Octave, in ' M. de Camors,' 
quoted on Tennyson, 164. 

Fields, J. T. , letter from Procter, 114 ; 
a visit to Tennyson, anecdotes, 118. 

' First Quarrel, The,' 193. 

FitzGerald, Edward, visit in Cumber- 
land with Spedding and Alfred 
Tennyson, 58 ; his opinion of Alfred 
Tennyson, 58 ; letter to Bernard 
Barton on Alfred Tennyson, 61 ; 
with Tennyson at Leamington, 65 ; 
his opinion on ' The Skipping 
Rope,' 66 ; quoted his fears for 
' In Memoriam,' 80 ; letter to 
W. B. Donne, 80 ; letter to Fred- 
erick Tennyson on ' The Princess,' 
85 ; his idea of what Tennyson 
was born to do, 85 ; Tennyson 
often with, 91 ; quoted, 93, 96 ; 
his discontent with ' In Memo- 
riam,' 96 ; with Tennysons at 
Twickenham and Isle of Wight, 
no ; Tennyson's praise for ' Euph- 
ranor,' 113 ; letter to Professor 
E. B. Cowell, 126 ; opinion of Ten- 
nyson's earlier work, 142 ; his letter 
to W. H. Thompson on bust of 
Tennyson, 146 ; his opinion on 
'The Window,' 162; his letter to 
Sir W. F. Pollock, 162 ; on ' Luc- 
retius,' 164 ; on * The Last Tourna- 
ment,' 170 ; Tennyson's visit to, 
180 ; his letter to Spedding about 
publication of Charles Tennyson 
Turner's Sonnets, 190 ; his letters 
with reference to loss of Spedding, 



202 ; Tennyson's lines to, on send- 
ing of his MS. of ' Tiresias ' to, 
214 ; death of, 214. 

' Fleet, The,' suggested by speech of 
Sir Graham Berry, 225. 

' Flight, The,' 220. 

' P'oresters, The,' reappearance of 
'National Song' in, 35; produced 
in New York by Mr. Augustin 
Daly, 232; copyright performance 
at Lyceum, 232 ; success in New 
York, 234 ; considered, 234. 

' Forlorn,' 229. 

Forster, John, member of the Anony- 
mous Club, 62 ; Tennyson's Sonnet 
to W. C. Macready recited by, on 
occasion of farewell dinner, 106. 

' Fortnightly Review, The,' Mr. Swin- 
burne's travesty ' Disgust' in, 202. 

' Fragment, A,' 39. 

' Frater Ave Atque Vale,' published 
in ' The Nineteenth Century,' 210. 

' Freedom,' printed in ' Macmillan's 
Magazine,' 215. 

Freeman, Prof. E. A., i6d. 

Freshwater, Tennysons go to live at, 
no. 

' Friendship's Offering,' Alfred Tenny- 
son contributes Sonnet to, 43. 

Fytche, Mrs., Alfred Tennyson's 
grandmother, 12. 

Fytche, Miss Mary Anne, Alfred 
Tennyson's aunt, 12. 

Galahad, character of, 134. 

' Galahad, Sir,' relation to ' The 

Idylls,' 133. 
Garden, Francis, letter to R. C. 

Trench, 55. 
' Gardener's Daughter, The,' 70. 
' Gareth and Lynette,' praise of, by 

' 'The Spectator ' and ' Athenaeum,' 

170. 
' Gareth,' character of, 133. 
Garibaldi, his visit to Farringford, 

158 ; referred to in ' To Ulysses,' 

158. . 

Gatty, Rev. A., on 'In Memoriam, 

237. 
Gawain, character of, 136. 
' Gem, The,' Tennyson's contributions 

to(i8 3 i), 38. 
Geraint, character of, 132. 
Gilchrist, Mrs., consulted upon the 

site for Aldworth, 160. 



INDEX 



257 



Gladstone, Mr. W. E., Tennyson's 
meeting with, at Rogers', 81 ; din- 
ner-party at Mr. Palgrave's, 157 ; 
his visit to Tennyson, 265 ; dinner 
at Lord Houghton's, 180 ; yachting 
tour in North-West Europe with 
Tennyson, 212 ; their presentation 
of the freedom of the Burgh of 
Kirkwall, 212 ; entertained by the 
King of Denmark, 212 ; Tennyson 
created Peer, 212. 

Glasgow University offers Tennyson 
Lord Rectorship, 112. 

1 Golden Supper, The,' considered 
with 'The Lover's Tale,' 50. 

Gollancz, Mr. Israel, 232. 

1 Good Words,' ' The Victim' in, Jan. 
1868, 165 ; ' 1865-1866' in, 166. 

Gosse, Mr. Edmund, on Tennyson's 
reading an anecdote, 30 ; review 
of 'The Lover's Tale' in 'The 
Academy,' 53 ; B. W. Procter's 
copy of 1842 ' Poems ' in possession 
of, 70 ; Professor Daa, to, on 
Tennyson, 170 ; Tennyson's in- 
fluence on, 245. 

'Grandmother's Apology, The,' in 
' Once a Week,' 144 ; Sir J. E. 
Millais' picture of, 144 ; afterwards 
called ' The Grandmother,' 144. 

Grasby, Charles Tennyson appointed 
Vicar of, 60. 

Guest, 'Sir Ivor Bertie, ' The Window' 
printed privately at the press of, 
161. 

Guinevere, character of, 138. 

Hallam, Arthur Henry, at Cam- 
bridge with Tennyson, 21 ; birth 
and early years, 21 ; his ' Timbuc- 
too,' 24; contemplates a volume 
with Tennyson, 28 ; as Verges in 
' Much Ado,' 29 ; his volume with 
Tennyson abandoned, 30 ; ' On 
Poems, chieflv Lyrical,' 32 ; attacked 
by 'Christopher North,' 36; in 
Spain with Tennyson, 37 ; engaged 
to Tennyson's sister, 38 ; his essay 
on ' The Conduct of the Indepen- 
dent Party during the Civil War,' 
38 ; on ' The Influence of Italian 
upon English Literature,' 38; de- 
scription of Alfred Tennyson in 
1832, 40 ; takes his degree and 
enters Inner Temple, 40 ; his en- 



gagement announced, 40; letter to 
Trench, 41 ; Sonnet to Emily 
Tennyson, 41 ; ' To the Loved 
One,' 41 ; goes to London, 42 ; 
rejoinder to Rossetti's ' Disquisi- 
zioni Sullo S'pirito Antipapale,' 43 ; 
delicate health, 54 ; goes to Ger- 
many, 54 ; death of, 54 ; love of 
Alfred Tennyson for, 55 ; 'In 
Memoriam,' 96. 

Hallam, Henry, his objection to 
Arthur Hallam and Tennyson's 
combined volume, 30 ; his attitude 
to his son's engagement, 38. 

Hamley, General, ' The Charge of 
the Heavy Brigade ' dedicated to, 
203 ; ' Sir Tray : an Arthurian 
Legend,' travesty of Tennyson by, 
203. 

' Hands all Round,' sung at St. 
James's Hall by Mr. Santley, an 
anecdote, 204. 

'Happy,' 230. 

Hare and Kendal, Messrs., 'The 
Falcon ' produced at St. James's 
Theatre by, 191. 

' Harold,' Review in 'The Academy,' 
by Mr. John Addington Symonds, 
on, 180 ; considered, 182. 

Harrington, 10. 

Hawker, Rev. Robert Stephen, his 
poem 'The Quest of the Sangreal,' 
168 ; controversy on ' The Holy 
Grail,' 168. 

Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 126. 

Head, Sir Edmund, letter of Henry 
Taylor to, 108. 

' Helen's Tower,' printed by Lord 
Dufferin, 149 ; copy of the pam- 
phlet in the British Museum, 150. 

Hemans, Felicia, 76. 

Henley, Mr. W. E., on ' Vastness ' in 
' Views and Reviews,' 229. 

' Heptalogia, The ; or the Seven 
against Sense,' by A. C. Swin- 
burne, 202. 

' Hero and Leander,' 35. 

' Hesperides,' considered, 29. 

High Beach, Essex, Tennyson at, 61. 

Holmes, Oliver Wendell, his visit 
with his daughter to Farringford, 
224 ; his description of visit, 224. 

' Holy Grail, The,' controversy on, 
168. 

Holywell Glen, 10. 



K 



258 



INDEX 



'Homes and Havnts of Alfred, Lord 
Tennyson,' by G. G. Napier, 238. 

Home, Richard Hengist, on Alfred 
Tennyson, in ' A New Spirit of the 
Age,' 72. 

Houghton, A., illustration of 'The 
Victim,' in 'Good Words,' by, 
165. 

Houghton, Lord (Richard Monckton 
Milnes), Tennyson to, quoted, 14 ; 
an early friend of Tennyson, 22 ; 
Tennyson's first attraction for, 23 ; 
his ' Timbuctoo,' 24; his Essay 
on ' The Influence of Homer,' 24 ; 
as Beatrice in 'Much Ado,' 29; he 
asks Alfred Tennyson to contribute 
to 'The Tribute,' 60 ; his critique 
on ■ Poems, 1842,' 66 ; pension be- 
stowed on Tennyson mainly through , 
81 ; offered to place wing of his 
house at disposal of Tennyson, 
95 ; created Lord Houghton 1863, 
150; his visit to Tennyson, 165; 
his description of visit, 165 ; his 
letter to his Aunts on Tennyson 
coming to dine, 168 ; Tennyson's 
dinner to meet Mr. Gladstone, 
180. 

1 How and the Why, The,' 34. 

Howitt, Mary, in ' The Gem,' 38. 

Howitt, William, on Tennyson, 168. 

Hunt, Leigh, reviews Charles and 
Alfred Tennyson in 'The Tatler,' 
38; met Tennyson at Rogers', 
81 ; candidate for the Laureate- 
ship, 94. 

Huxley, Professor T. H., 160. 

' Idylls of the Hearth,' 157. 

1 Idylls of the King,' considered, 127 ; 
new edition dedicated to memory of 
the Prince Consort, 150. 

'In Memoriam,' Tennyson at work 
on, 80 ; FitzGerald's fears for, 
80 ; rescue of mss. of, an anecdote, 
92 ; published 1850, 92 ; divided 
for purpose of analysis into five 
parts, 96 ; considered, 96 ; fourth 
edition, ' O sorrow, wilt thou live 
with me?' added, 105; Rev. A. 
Gatty on, 237 ; analysis by Rev. F. 
W. Robertson, 237. 

i In the Garden at Swainston,' 169. 

' In the Laureate's Country,' by Rev. 
A. J. Church, 238. 



' In the Valley of Cauteretz,' 149. 

' Ionica,' 119. 

Irving, Mr. Henry, as Philip in 
'Queen Mary,' 179; 'The Cup' 
produced at Lyceum by, 196. 

Jackson, Mr., publisher of 'Poems 
by Two Brothers,' 15. 

Japp, Dr. A. H., quoted, 92. 

Jenkinson, Mr,, The Tennysons' din- 
ner with, 225. 

Jennings, Mr. H. J., his biographical 
sketch of Tennyson, 237. 

Jones, Mr. Ernest, Tennyson's letter 
to, 112. 

'Jubilee Ode, 1887,' 228. 

Kane, Dr. Elisha Kent, R.N., 
account of Tennyson's pillar, 114. 

' Kate,' 49. 

Keats, John, his influence on Tenny- 
son, 33, 77. 

Keble, John, influence on Tennyson, 
60. 

' Keepsake' of Miss Power, Tenny- 
son's stanzas ' What time I wasted 
youthful hours' in, 105. 

Kemble, John Mitchell, at Cambridge 
with Tennyson, 29 ; Dogberry in 
'Much Ado,' 29; his opinion of 
' Poems, chiefly Lyrical,' 36 ; his 
opinion of Charles Tennyson's Son- 
nets, 38. 

Kennedy, E. R., at Cambridge with 
Tennyson, 22. 

Kent, Duchess of, Tennyson's Epi- 
taph on, 150. 

King, Messrs. H. S., and Co., 
cabinet edition of Tennyson's works, 
169. y 

King, Miss Zoe, lent Tennyson copy 
of ' Death's Jest-Book, ' 113. 

Kingsley, Charles, Frederick Deni- 
son Maurice's letter to, 108 ; paper 
on Alexander Smith in ' Fraser's 
Magazine' by, 113; his action in 
defence of Eyre, 160. 

Kipling, Mr. Rudyard, Tennyson's 
influence on, 245. 

Kirkwall, Mr. Gladstone and Tenny- 
son presented with the freedom of 
the Burgh of, 212. 

Knight, Charles, on Tennvson, 159. 

Knowles, Mr. J. T., editor of 'The 
Nineteenth Century,' 170; design 



INDEX 



259 



for Aldworth, 189 ; ' Gareth and 
Lynette ' read to, 170. 
Knowles, Sheridan, rival of Tennyson 
for pension, 82. 

1 Lady Clare,' 65. 

1 Lady of Shalott, The,' considered, 

44 ; pre-Raphaelite School forecast 

in, 78 ; relation to ' Idylls,' 127. 
Lancelot, character of, 136. 
Landon, Letitia E., j6. 
Landor, Walter Savage, member of 

the Anonymous Club, 62; dinner 

invitation to Tennyson quoted, 62 ; 

' Morte de Arthur ' read to, 65 ; at 

Rogers', 81. 
Lang, Mr. Andrew, review of ' Queen 

Mary ' in ' The Academy,' by, 180 ; 

on Kingsley, 189. 
4 Last Tournament, The,' alteration 

of lines ' He rose, he turned,' etc., 

169 ; original version printed in 

'Contemporary Review,' 169. 
Leighton, John, decorative frame for 

' 1865-1866 ' designed by, 166. 
' Lines of E. L.' (Edward Lear), 

no. 
' Literary Chronicle and Weekly Re- 
view, The,' notice of ' Poems by 

Two Brothers,' 18. 
Locker-Lampson, Mr. Frederick, his 

friendship with Tennyson, 159, 159, 

224. 
1 Locksley Hall,' considered, 69; B. 

W. Procter's copy of, 70. 
' Locksley Hall Sixty Years After,' 

70; considered, 225. 
Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth, his 

admiration for Tennyson, 165 ; 

Tennyson's letter to, 179. 
' Lotos Eaters, The,' considered, 44, 

45- 

Louth Grammar School, 10 ; the 
Tennysons at, under Mr. Waite, 
11. 

1 Lover's Tale, The,' written at Cam- 
bridge, 24 ; suppressed, 50 ; ana- 
lysis of, 51 ; Mr. Edmund Gosse 
on, in ' The Academy,' 53. 

'Lucretius,' publication in America, 
163 ; in Macmillan's Magazine,' 
164. 

Lushington, E. , at Cambridge with 
Tennyson, 22 ; married Cecilia 
Tennyson, 103. 



Lushington, Henry, ' The Princess ' 
(second edition) dedicated to, 84 ; 
Tennyson's opinion of, 85 ; Tenny- 
son's frequent visits to, 91. 

Lyceum Theatre, ' Queen Mary ' pro- 
duced at, April 1876, 179 ; ' The 
Cup ' produced at, January 3, 1881, 
196 ; copyright performance of 
' The Foresters ' at, 232. 

Lytton, Lord Bulwer, ' The New 
Timon : A Romance of London,' a 
satirical attack on Tennyson, 82 ; 
Tennyson's reply, 82. 

Mablethorpe, early visits of the 
Tennysons to, 13. 

Mackay, Dr. C. , candidate for the 
Laureateship, 94. 

' M' Master University Monthly,' fac- 
simile of MS. of songs in ' The Prin- 
cess ' published in, 89. 

'Macmillan's Magazine,' January 
i860, Tennyson's ' Sea-Dreams in, 
147 ; ' Lucretius' in, 164 ; ' Wages ' 
in, 165 ; ' Freedom ' printed in, 
215 ; ' Vastness ' in, 229. 

Macmillan & Co., Messrs., Transfer 
of Tennyson's copyright to, 215. 

Macready, W. C. , member of the 
Anonymous Club, 62 ; farewell 
dinner to, 106. 

' Maid of Savoy, The,' 18. 

Malvern, Tennyson and his wife at, 
108. 

Mann, Dr. J. R. , Tennyson's ' Maud ' 
vindicated, 119. 

Martin, Sir Theodore, parody quoted, 

73- 

« Mary, Queen,' considered, 173; pro- 
duced at the Lyceum, April 1876, 
179 ; opinion of critics on, 179 ; re- 
view in ' The Academy ' by Mr. 
Andrew Lang, 180. 

' Maud ' published 1855, greater part 
written in garden at Swainston, 
115 ; contents of volume of, 115 ; 
origin of, 116; reviews, 116; tra- 
vesties, 118 ; Anti-Maud, 118 ; Dr. 
Mann's ' Tennyson's " Maud " vin- 
dicated,' 119; in 'Ionica,' verses 
'After Reading Maud,' 119; con- 
sidered, 119; E. C. Stedman's 
estimate considered, 122, 123. 

Maurice, Frederick Denison, at Cam- 
bridge with Tennyson, 22 ; Tenny- 



26o 



INDEX 



son's frequent visits to, 91 ; his 
letter to Charles Kingsley, 108 ; 
godfather of Hallam Tennyson, 
109 ; expelled from King's College, 
no ; offers to resign position of 
Chaplain of Lincoln's Inn, no; 
Tennvson's letter to, in. 

'May Queen, The,' 48. 

Merivale, Charles, at Cambridge with 
Tennyson, 22, 29. 

' Merlin and the Gleam,' 230. 

Mill, John Stuart, member of the 
Anonymous Club, 62 ; on the Eyre 
Defence, 160. 

Millais, Sir J. E. , illustration of ' The 
Grandmother ' by, 144. 

1 Minnie and Winnie,' in ' St. Nicho- 
las,' 195. 

Mitford, Mary Russell, in 'The Gem,' 
38; ' Dora Cresswell,' 65 ; descrip- 
tion of Shiplake Church by, 94. 

Monkhouse, Mr. Cosmo, Rossetti's 
sketch, 124. 

Monteith, on ' Poems, chiefly Lyrical,' 

3 2 - 
' Montenegro ' in ' The Nineteenth 

Century,' 189. 

Moore, Thomas, early influence on 
Alfred Tennyson, 17; at Rogers', 
81. 

Morris, Mr. Lewis, Tennyson's in- 
fluence on, 245. 

Morris, Mr. William, Tennyson's in- 
fluence on, 77, 245. 

' Morte d' Arthur,' afterwards incor- 
porated into ' The Passing of 
Arthur,' 71 ; relation to the ' Idylls,' 
127. 

Moxon, Edward, ' Poems' by Alfred 
Tennyson, 1842, published by, 65 ; 
' The Princess ' published by, 1847, 
84 ; 'In Memoriam' published by, 
1850, 93 ; ' Ode on the Death of 
the Duke of Wellington ' published 
by, 109. 

' Mr. Sludge the Medium,' Tennyson 
on, 9. 

Musset, Alfred de, contrasted with 
Tennyson, 68. 



Napier, Mr. G. G. , ' The Home and 
Haunts of Alfred, Lord Tennyson,' 
by, 238. 

National Anthem, addition to, 126. 



' National Review, The,' on 'Maud,' 
116. 

' National Song, A,' 35. 

' New Timon and the Poets, The,' 
82 ; Tennyson's reply to Bulwer 
Lytton's ' The New Timon : A 
Romance of London,' 82. 

'New Review, The,' 'To Sleep' 
printed in, 232. 

' New Spirit of the Age, A,' R. H. 
Home on Tennyson in, 71. 

' Nineteenth Century, The,' first 
number, March 1877, 189 ; Tenny- 
son's Prefatory Sonnets to, 189 ; 
Tennyson's contributions to, 189 ; 
' Despair ' printed in, 202 ; ' Frater 
Ave Atque Vale ' published in, 210. 

' No More,' 39. 

North, Christopher (Prof. John Wil- 
son), on 'Poems, chiefly Lyrical,' 
36 ; Tennyson's reply, 36. 

Northampton, Lord, editor of ■ The 
Tribute,' 59. 

' Northern Farmer, The,' R. C. 
Trench on, 156. 

Norton, Hon. Mrs., in 'The Gem,' 
39; asked to meet Tennyson, 81. 

' Notes and Marginalia,' by Mr. J. 
Huband Smith, 237. 

' Ode on the Death of the Duke of 
Wellington,' 109. 

' Ode on the opening of the Indian 
and Colonial Exhibition by the 
Queen,' 225. 

' CEnone,' 43, 149. 

' CEnone, The Death of,' 241. 

Ogle, Mr. John, dinner-party at Mi. 
Pal grave's, 157. 

' Oh that 'twere possible,' 60 ; in ' The 
Tribute,' 60 ; Mr. Swinburne on, 
60; Sir John Simeon's remark on, 
ti6; origin of ' Maud,' 116. 

' Once a week,' Tennyson's ' The 
Grandmother ' in, 144 ; ' The Spite- 
ful letter' in, 165. 

' Oriana,' 33. 

' Owd Roa,' 229. 

' Owl, The,' 13, 230. 

' Palace of Art, The,' 46. 

Palgrave, F. T., in Portugal with 
Tennyson, 145 ; his account of visit 
in ' Under the Crown,' 145 ; dinner- 
party, Feb. 12, 1864, 157. 



INDEX 



261 



Palgrave, Reginald, dinner-party at 
F. T. Palgrave's, 157. 

Palgrave, W. Gifford, at dinner-party 
at F. T. Palgrave's, 157; addressed 
as Ulysses in 'Demeter' volume, 

157. 

' Passing of Arthur, 70, 131, 166. 

Patmore, Coventry, first introduction 
to Tennyson at the Procters', 92 ; 
an anecdote on MS. of ' In Memo- 
riam,' 92. 

Patterson, Monsignor, dinner-party 
at F. T. Palgrave's, 157. 

Paul, Mr. Kegan, publication of 
Charles Tennyson Turner's sonnets 
by, 190. 

Peel, Sir Robert, gives pension to 
Tennyson, 81. 

Pelleas, character of, 136. 

' Pelleas and Etarre,' 166. 

Poe, Edgar Allan, on Poems, 1842, 
66; criticism, in an essay on 'The 
Poetic Principle,' on Alfred Tenny- 
son, 67; his admiration for Tenny- 
son, 67. 

' Poems by two Brothers,' origin of, 
14 ; considered and quoted, 15. 

' Poems, chiefly Lyrical,' contents, 
30; reviews, 31 ; considered, 33 ; 
Blakesley and Kemble on, 36 ; 
' Christopher North' on, 36. 

' Poems,' volume of, published 1832, 
43 ; contents, 43 ; considered, 44 ; 
reviews, 50. 

1 Poems,' two volumes published 1842, 
65 ; contents, 65 ; reviews, 66 ; 
considered, 68 ; fourth edition, 
1846, ' The Golden Year ' included, 
84 ; sixth edition, 1850, 92 ; 
seventh edition, four new pieces 
added, — 'To the Queen,' 'Edwin 
Morris,' ' The Eagle,' ' Come not 
when 1 am dead,' 105; eighth edi- 
tion, 1853, no. 

' Poems,' cabinet edition of Tenny- 
son's works, 1874, contents, pub- 
lished by Messrs. H. S. King and 
Co., 169. 

' Poems,' library edition of Tennyson's 
works, six volumes, published by 
Messrs. Strahan and Co., 1872, con- 
tents, 170. 

' Poetry of Tennyson,' 1890, by Mr. 
H. J. van Dyke, 237. 

Pollock, Sir Frederick, Tennyson's 



reading ' Maud ' to, 124 ; Tennyson 
reads ' The Holy Grail ' to, 166. 

Power, Miss, Stanzas of Tennyson in 
' Keepsake ' of, 105. 

Praed, Winthrop Mackworth, in 'The 
Gem,' 38. 

' Prefatory Poem to my brother's 
sonnets,' 19, 190. 

' Princess, The,' 1847, probable germ 
of, 84 ; second edition, 1848, dedi- 
cated to Henry Lushington, 84 ; 
third edition, many corrections in, 
84 ; fourth edition, other changes, 
84 ; fifth edition, 84 ; keynote of, 87 ; 
considered. 87 ; facsimile of MS. of 
the Songs, 89 ; variations between 
them and the Songs as they now 
stand, 89 ; Mr. Percy M. Wallace 
on the songs in, 91 ; study by Mr, 
S. E. Dawson on, 237 ; study by 
Mr. Percy Wallace on, 237. 

Pritchard, Mr. , dinner at Cambridge, 
166. 

Procter, Bryan Waller (Barry Corn- 
wall), his copy of ' Locksley Hall,' 
70 ; candidate for Laureateship, 
94 ; letter to J. T. Fields, 114. 

Procter, Mrs., Tennyson's visits to, 
179. 

' Progress of Spring, The,' afterwards 
dedicated to Miss Mary Boyle, 61, 
61. 

' Promise of May, The,' produced at 
the Globe Theatre by Mrs. Bernard 
Beere, Nov. nth, 1882, 205 ; cast 
of, 205 ; its failure, 206 ; considered, 
206 ; protest on the fourth night by 
the Marquis of Queensberry, 209 ; 
treatment by critics of, 210 ; pub- 
lished by Macmillan 1886, 225. 

Pyrenees, The Tennysons' vwt to the, 
148 ; Arthur Clough's visit to, 148. 



' Quarterly Review,' on ' Darling 
Room,' 48; notice of Poems pub- 
lished 1832, 50; on 'Poems' of 
1842, 66. 

' Queen, To the,' 105. 

' Queen Mary,' considered, 173. 

Queensberry, Marquis of, his protest 
at the Globe Theatre on ' The Pro- 
mise of May,' 209. 

Rand, Professor Theodore, facsimile 
of MS. of the songs in ' The Prin- 



26: 



INDEX 



cess,' published in 'The M'Master 

University Monthly ' by, 89. 
' Rasselas,' Dr. Johnson's, 84. 
Rehan, Miss Ada, as Maid Marian in 

' The Foresters,' 234. 
' Richard Grenville, Sir : a Ballad of 

the Fleet,' afterwards renamed 

'The Revenge,' 189; Carlyle on, 

190. 
' Ring, The,' 230. 
' Rizpah,' 194. 
Robertson, Rev. F. W. , Analysis of 

' In Memoriam ' by, 237. 
Robinson, Rev. E. A., at Somersby, 

37- 

Robinson, H. Crabb, 81. 

Rogers', Samuel, dinner at, 81 ; un- 
willing to accept position of Poet 
Laureate, 94. 

' Romney's Remorse,' 230. 

' Rosalind,' 49. 

' Rosa Rosarum,' by the Hon. Mrs. 
Boyle, Tennyson's introductory 
verses to, 215. 

' Rose, on this terrace fifty years ago,' 
61. 

Rossetti, Dante Gabriel, Hallam's re- 
joinder to ' Disquisizioni Sullo 
Spirito Antipapale,' 43; his sketch 
of Tennyson while reading ' Maud ' 
at Browning's, 124 ; Tennyson's 
influence on, 77, 245. 

Royal Society, Tennyson member of, 

159- 

Ruskin, Mr. John, his action in de- 
fence of Eyre, 160. 

Russell's, Lord John, recept : on at, 
106. 



'St. Agnes' in 'The Keepsake,' 
afterwards altered to 'St. Agnes' 
Eve,' 60. 

St. James' Theatre, ' The Falcon ' 
produced at, on Dec. 18, 1879, by 
Messrs. Hare and Kendal, 191. 

' St. Nicholas,' 'The City Child,' and 
1 Minnie and Winnie,' published in, 

195- 
' St. Simeon Stylites,' 68, 77, 11 . 
1 St. Telemachus,' 242. 
'Sailor Boy, The,' in Miss Emily 

Faithfull's 'Victoria Regia,' 148. 
Santley, Mr., 'Hands all Round,' 

sung by, an anecdote, 204. 



Scott, Sir Walter, early influence on 
Alfred Tennyson, 8, 17. 

Scrivelsby, 10. 

'Sea Dreams' in ' Macmillan's Maga- 
zine,' i860, considered, 147. 

Sellwood, Miss Emily, marriage of, to 
Tennyson, 94; Spedding's opinion 
of, 96 ; ' Enoch Arden ' dedicated 
to, 151 ; removal to Aldworth in 
consideration of her health, 160; 
music to ' Home they brought him,' 
161 ; music to ' Hands All Round,' 
204 ; ' Locksley Hall Sixty Years 
After ' dedicated to, 225. 

Sellwood, Miss Louisa, marriage of 
Charles Tennyson to, 60. 

Shakespeare, William, influence on 
Tennyson, 173, 235, 244. 

Shelley, Percy Bysshe, early influence 
on Tennyson, 33, 35, 52, 77; his 
' Adonais ' published in ' Transac- 
tions,' $7. 

Shepherd, R. H., ' Tennysoniana,' 
by, 238. 

Shiplake Church, description of, by 
Miss Mary Russell Mitford, 94. 

'Silent Voices, The,' 243. 

Simeon, Sir John, introduction to 
Tennyson by Carlyle, 80 ; his re- 
mark on ' Oh that 'twere possible,' 
origin of Maud,' 116 ; dinner-party 
at Mr. Palgrave's, 157 ; death of, 
169. 

' Sir Lancelot and Queen Guinevere,' 
127. 

'Skipping Rope, The,' FitzGerald's 
opinion on, 66. 

' Sleep, To,' printed in the ' New Re- 
view,' 232 ; afterwards appeared in 
'The Foresters,' 232. 

Smith, Alexander, a pattern-designer 
in a Glasgow factory, his poetry, 
112; Charles Kingsley's paper in 
' Fraser's Magazine' on, 113; 'A 
Life Drama' by, 113; William Al- 
lingham in the ' Athenaeum' attacks 
Smith, 113. 

Smith, Mr. Bosworth, Tennyson's 
letter to, 112. 

Smith, Professor Goldwin, 125, 160. 

Smith, Mr. J. Huband, ' Notes and 
Marginalia ' by, 237. 

' Snob, The,' Thackeray's ' Timbuc- 
too,' in, 28. 

Somersby, Rectory and Village of, 



INDEX 



263 



4. 
28 



5 ; Hallam and Tennyson at, 
; the Tennysons leave, 61. 

Southey, Robert, P.L., his copy of 
'Poems, chiefly Lyrical,' 30; his 
death, 73. 

'Spectator, The,' ' Gareth and Lyn- 
ette ' praised by, 170. 

Spedding, James, at Cambridge with 
Tennyson, 22 ; speech on Political 
Unions, 23; Lines to J. S. , 23; 
presentation copy of ' Poems, 
chiefly Lyrical,' 30; visit of Alfred 
Tennyson and FitzGerald to, 58 ; 
FitzGerald's letter, on publication 
of Charles Tennyson Turner's Son- 
nets, 190 ; death of, 202. 

Spencer, Mr, Herbert, 160. 

'Spinster's Sweet-' Arts, The,' 219, 
220. 

' Spiteful Letter, The,' 165. 

Stanford, Prof. C. V., quoted, 20, 
91. 

Stanley, Dean, visit to the Tenny- 
sons, 145. 

Stedman, Edmund Clarence, his 
estimate of ' Maud,' 122. 

'Sterling. The,' formerly 'The Anony- 
mous Club,' 62. 

Sterling, John, review of ' Timbuc- 
too,' 24; member of the Anony- 
mous Club, 62. 

Stockworth, 10. 

' Study of the Works of Alfred Tenny- 
son,' by Mr. E. C. Tainsch, 237. 

Sullivan, Sir Arthur, his music for 
Tennyson's ' The Window,' 162. 

' Supposed Confession of a Second- 
rate Sensitive Mind,' 34. 

Swainston, seat of Sir John Simeon, 
Tennyson in the garden at, 169. 

Swinburne, Mr. Algernon Charles, 
on 'O that 'twere possible,' 60; 
his reply to the attacks of his critics, 
155 ; his travesty ' Disgust ' in ' The 
Fortnightly Review,' 202 ; ' The 
Heptalogia : or the Seven against 
Sense,' 202 ; his travesty on Tenny- 
son ' The Higher Pantheism in a 
Nutshell,' 203 ; Tennyson's influ- 
ence on, jj, 245. 

Symonds, Mr. John Addington, re- 
view of ' Harold ' in ' The Academy ' 
by, 180. 

TAINE, M., on Alfred Tennyson, 68. 



Tainsch, E. C, ' Study of the Works 
of Alfred Ttnnyson ' by, 237. 

' Tatler, The,' Leigh Hunt's review 
of the Tennysons in, 38. 

Taylor, Bayard, on Tennyson's read- 
ing, 62 ; his walk with Tennyson, 
125. 

Taylor, Sir Henry, on Tennyson's 
reading, 62 ; letter to Sir Edmund 
Head, 108; letter to Tennyson on 
the ' Ode on the Death of the Duke 
of Wellington,' 109; Tennyson's 
reply, 109 ; an anecdote of Tenny- 
son, 125. 

Tealby, Curacy of Charles Tennyson 
at, 60. 

' Tears, idle Tears,' quoted, 10. 

Tennyson, Alfred, Baron Aid worth 
and Farringford, D.C.L., P.L. , 
Ethics of a Biography of, 1 ; birth 
and parentage, 3 ; first line of 
poetry, 7 ; characteristics in child- 
hood, 7; first poem, 7; elegy on 
his grandmother, quoted, 8 ; early 
attempts at verse, 8 ; amusements 
in boyhood, 9 ; at Cadney's vil- 
lage school, 10 ; early love of nature, 
10 ; at Louth Grammar School, 11 ; 
at Mablethorpe, 13 ; ' The Owl,' 
13 ; his recollection of Byron's 
death, 13 ; leaves school, 14; origin 
and publication of ' Poems by Two 
Brothers,' 14 ; goes to Cambridge, 
20; his opinion of Arthur Hallam, 
21 ; a member of ' The Apostles,' 
22; his paper on 'Ghosts,' 23; 
' The Lover's Tale,' 24 ; ' Timbuc- 
too,' origin of, 24; ' Timbuctoo ' 
considered, 25 ; contemplates a 
volume with Hallam, 28; ' Hes- 
perides,' 29 ; his reading described, 
30 ; his volume with Hallam aban- 
doned, 30 ; ' Poems, chiefly Lyri- 
cal,' 30 ; reviews, 31 ; ' Poems, 
chiefly Lyrical ' considered, 33 ; 
attacked by Christopher North, 36 ; 
his reply, 36 ; in Spain with Hallam , 
37 ; death of his father, 37 ; leaves 
Cambridge, 37 ; reviewed by Leigh 
Hunt in ' The Tatler,' 38 ; 'No 
more,' 39 ; ' Anacreontics,' 39 ; ' A 
Fragment,' 39; ' Check every out- 
flash,' 40 ; characteristics in 1832, 
40 ; at Somersby with Hallam, 40 ; 
his impression of the summer of 



264 



INDEX 



Hallam's engagement, 42 ; contri- 
butes two sonnets to ' The York- 
shire Literary Annual' and ' Friend- 
ship's Offering,' 43 ; volume of 
Poems published 1832, 43 ; con- 
tents, 43; 'The Lady of Shalott,' 
44 ; ' The Lotos Eaters,' 45 ; 
' Fatima,' 46 ; * The Palace of Art,' 
46 ; 'A Dream of Fair Women, 
47; 'The May Queen,' 48 ; 'Dar- 
ling Room,' 48; 'Rosalind and 
Kate,' 49 ; reviews on Poems, 50 ; 
' The Lover's Tale ' suppressed, 
50 ; considered, 51 ; in town with 
his sister studying the Elgin 
Marbles, 54 ; death of Arthur 
Hallam, 54; grief for his death, 
55 ; early years in London, 57 ; 
Transactions of the Union Society, 

57 ; contents, 57 ; his friends, 58 ; 
visit to Cumberland with the Sped- 
dings, 58 ; at work on 1842 volume, 

58 ; Carlyle added to his friends, 
59 ; letter to Milnes, 59 ; promise 
to write for ' The Tribute,' 59 ; ' St. 
Agnes,' 60 ; beginning of friend- 
ship for Miss Mary Boyle, 61 ; 
member of the ' Anonymous Club,' 
62; literary work in London, 63; 
'The Cock,' 63; with FitzGerald 
at Leamington, 65 ; ' Poems,' two 
volumes published 1842, 65 ; con- 
tents, 65 ; ' The Skipping Rope,' 
66 ; reviews, 66 ; appreciation and 
praise, 66 ; poems of 1842 con- 
sidered, 68 ; ' St. Simeon Stylites,' 
68; 'The Vision of Sin,' 69; 'Locks- 
ley Hall,' 69; 'Dora,' 70; 'Morte 
d' Arthur, ' 71 ; introduction to Eliza- 
beth Barrett, 72 ; Laureateship va- 
cant, 73; success and opportunity, 
75 ; the spirit of the age, 75 ; Tenny- 
son, the voice of the new era, 'j^j ; 
Pre-Raphaelite school, 78 ; effect 
of fame on, 79; at work on 'In 
Memoriam,' 80; dinner at Rogers', 
81 ; pension of ^200 a year, 82 ; 
attacked by Bulwer Lytton, 82 ; 
'The New Timon and the Poets,' 
his replv, 82 ; ' Afterthought,' 
83 ; ' The Princess,' 84 ; five 
editions, 84 ; visit to Henry Lush- 
ington, 85 ; his opinion of Henry 
Lushington, 85; 'The Princess' 
considered, 8; ; facsimile of MS. 



of the Songs in ' The Princess ' 
published, 89 ; goes to Valentia, 

91 ; verse ' To ,' ' You might 

have won the Poet's name,' 91 ; 
'In Memoriam' published 1850, 

92 ; marriage of, to Miss Emily 
Sellwood, 94; they go to live at 
Twickenham, 95 ; visiting, 96 ; 
made Poet Laureate, 96 ; 'In 
Memoriam ' considered, 96 ; 'To 
the Queen,' 105; 'Edwin Morris,' 
105 ; ' The Eagle,' 105 ; ' Come 
not when I am dead,' 105 ; Stanzas, 
' What time I wasted youthful hours,' 
105 ; his sonnet to W. C. Mac- 
ready, 106 ; in Italy with his wife, 
106 ; death of their baby, 106 ; 
reception at Lord Russell's, an 
anecdote, 106 ; friends at Twicken- 
ham, 106 ; ' Britons, guard your 
own,' 108; 'The Third of Feb- 
ruary 1852,' 108 ; ' Hands all 
Round,' 108; at Malvern, 108; 
Frederick Denison Maurice, god- 
father to his child, 108; 'Ode on 
the Death of the Duke of Welling- 
ton,' 109; Henry Taylor's letter 
on the Ode, 109 ; his reply, 109 ; 
visits of his friends, no; letter to 
Frederick Denison Maurice, no; 
his dislike of disagreements in tenet 
and doctrine, 112; his letters to 
Bishop Colenso, 112; Mr. Bosworth 
Smith, 112 ; Mr. Ernest Jones, 
112; his appreciation of literary 
work, 112 ; letter to Alexander 
Smith, 113; his approval of Thomas 
Lovell Beddoes, 113 ; his praise for 
FitzGerald's ' Euphranor,' 113 ; re- 
moval from Twickenham to the Isle 
of Weight 1853, 114 ; birth of Lionel, 
1854, 114 ; Tennyson's Pillar, 114 ; 
' The Charge of the Light Brigade,' 
115; 'Maud,' 1855, 115; contents 
of volume of ' Maud,' 115 ; reviews 
on 'Maud,' 116; travesties, 118; 
Dr. Mann's 'Tennyson's " Maud" 
Vindicated,' 119; his reply, 119; 

' Maud ' considered, 119 ; his read- 
ing of ' Maud ' to the Brownings, 
124 ; Rossetti's sketch of, 124 ; an 
anecdote of his reading ' Maud ' to 
a lady, 124 ; his talk with Lady 
Harriet Ashburton, 125 ; degree 
of D.C.L. conferred on, 125; at 



INDEX 



265 



work on ' Idylls of the King,' 125 ; 
1 Enid and Nimue ' printed for 
private circulation, 125 ; Bayard 
Taylor and Prince Albert at Far- 
ringford, 125, 126 ; addition of two 
stanzas to the ' National Anthem,' 
126; 'Idylls of the King,' 127; 
•The War,' 144; 'The Grand- 
mother's Apology,' 144; in Portu- 
gal with Mr. F. T. Palgrave, 145 ; 
controversy on bust of, presented 
to Trinity College, 145 ; ' Sea 
Dreams,' 146; ' l'ithonus,' 148; 
' The Sailor Boy,' 148 ; on the Con- 
tinent with his wife, 148 ; ' In the 
valley of Cauteretz,' 1^9 ; ' Helen's 
Tower,' 149 ; 'Attempts at Classic 
Metres in Quantity,' 151 ; epitaph 
on the Duchess of Kent, 151 ; 
' Enoch Arden,' volume 1864, 151 ; 
' Aylmer's Field,' 151 ; ' Enoch 
Arden,' 153 ; his tendency to trance 
and love of mysticism, 155 ; his 
letter of May 7th, 1874, 154 ; con- 
dition of contemporary poetry and 
influence on Tennyson's work, 154 ; 
Pre-Raphaelite Schools, 156 ; ' The 
Northern Farmer,' 156 ; dinner- 
party at Mr. Palgrave's, 157 ; visit 
of Garibaldi to, 158 ; elected Mem- 
ber of the Royal Society, 159 ; 
death of his mother, 159 ; refusal of 
baronetcy, 160 ; his action in de- 
fence of Eyre. 160; his letter, 161; 
volume of 1865, 161 ; ' The Cap- 
tain,' 161 ; ' The Window, or the 
Loves of the Wrens,' 161 ; ' Lucre- 
tius,' 163; his reputation, 164; 
visit of the Duke of Argyll, the 
Gladstones, and Lord Houghton, 
to Farringford, 165 ; visit of Long- 
fellow to Farringford, 165 ; ' The 
Victim,' 165 ; ' The Spiteful Letter,' 
165; 'Wages,' 165; '1865-1866,' 
166 ; his letter to ' Once a Week.' 
166 ; his visit to Cambridge, 166 ; 
removal to Aid worth, 166 ; volume 
of 1869, 166 ; controversy on the 
■ Holy Grail,' 168 ; visit to London, 
168 ; death of Sir John Simeon, 
169 ; ' In the Garden at Swainston,' 
169 ; his visit to Norway, 170 ; ' A 
Welcome to Marie Alexandrovna,' 
170; 'Queen Mary,' 172; con- 
sidered, 173 ; his visit to Fitz- 



Gerald's with his eldest son, 179 ; 
letter to Longfellow, 179 ; letter to 
Trench, 180 ; Browning's dedica- 
tion to, 180 ; dinner at Lord 
Houghton's, 180; 'Harold' con- 
sidered, 180; prefatory sonnet to 
'The Nineteenth Century,' 189; 
' Montenegro,' 189 ; ' To Victor 
Hugo,' ' Achilles over the Trench,' 
' The Revenge,' ' The Defence of 
Lucknow,' 189 ; ' Death of Charles 
Tennyson Turner,' 190; ' At Mid- 
night, June 30th, 1879,' 190 ; ' The 
Falcon ' produced at St. James's 
Theatre, 1879, 191 ; considered, 
191 ; his book of ' Ballads ' of 1880, 
193 ; contents, 193 ; ' The City 
Child,' 195 ; ' Minnie and Winnie,' 
195 ; ' The Cup,' 195 ; produced at 
the Lyceum, 196 ; its success, 196 ; 
considered, 196 ; review by Mr. 
William Archer, 199 ; death of 
Spedding, 202 ; ' Despair,' 202 ; 
'The Higher Pantheism in a Nut- 
shell,' travesty by Mr. Swinburne, 
203 ; General Hamley's travesty, 
203 ; opinions on ' Despair,' 203 ; 
considered, 204 ; anecdote on 
1 Hands all Round,' 204; 'The 
Promise of May ' produced at the 
Globe Theatre, 205 ; its failure, 
206 ; considered, 206 ; protest by 
the Marquis of Queensberry, 209 ; 
its treatment by the press, 210 ; 
4 Frater Ave Atque Vale,' 210; 
yachting tour with Mr. Gladstone, 
212 ; their presentation of the free- 
dom of the Burgh of Kirkwall, 212 ; 
entertained by the King of Den- 
mark, 212 ; luncheon-party on 
the yacht, 212 ; created peer, 212 ; 
comments by the press, 212 ; made 
President of the Incorporated Society 
of Authors, 215 ; death of Fitz- 
Gerald, 214; his lines toFitzGerald 
on sending of his MS. of ' Tiresias,' 
214 ; his contribution to pamphlet 
in connection with the Shakes- 
pearian Exhibition, 214 ; his intro- 
ductory verses to ' Rosa Rosarum,' 
215; 'Freedom,' 215; ' Becket ' 
considered, 215 ; his appreciation 
of American poets, 218 ; ' Warrior 
of God, man's friend,' 218 ; volume 
of poems, ' Tiresias/ 219 ; dedica- 



266 



INDEX 



tion to Browning, 219 ; contents, 
219 ; ' The Ancient Sage,' 219 ; 
'Early Spring,' 219; 'The Dead 
Prophet,' 221; ' Balin and Balan ' 
considered, 222 ; ' Despair,' con- 
sidered, 222 ; death of Lionel, 223 ; 
visit of Dr. Wendell Holmes and 
Miss Holmes to Farringford, 224 ; 
visit to Cambridge with Mr. and 
Mrs. Hallam Tennyson, 225 ; 
volume ' Locksley Hall Sixty Years 
After,' 225; contents, 225; 'The 
Fleet,' 225 ; ' Locksley Hall Sixty 
Years After ' considered, 225 ; his 
eightieth birthday, 228 ; Browning's 
letter to, 228 ; Mr. Theodore 
Watt's sonnets, 228 ; death of 
Browning, 229 ; volume entitled 
' Demeter, and other Poems,' 229 ; 
' Demeter and Persephone.' 229 ; 
' Forlorn,' 229 ; ' Crossing the Bar,' 
230 ; yachting on the Mediter- 
ranean, 232 ; ' To Sleep,' 232 ; 
' The Foresters,' produced in New 
York, 232 ; copyright performance 
at Lyceum, 232 ; its success in New 
York, 234 ; ' The Foresters ' con- 
sidered, 234 ; his later years, 236 ; 
literature on work and home of, 
237 ; ill-health, yachting in the 
Mediterranean, 238 ; proposed pro- 
duction of ' Becket,' 239 ; ' Akbar's 
Dream,' 239 ; illness, October 1892, 
239 ; death, 240 ; ' The death of 
CEnone,' 241 ; his loss to literature, 
244 ; influence of his long life on 
poetry, his influence on contem- 
porary poets, 245 ; spirit of his verse, 
245 ; three elements considered, 
246 ; the representative voice of the 
age, 250. 
Tennyson, Cecilia, married Edmund 

Law Lushington, 103. 
Tennyson, Charles (afterwards Charles 
Tennyson Turner), 3 ; character- 
istics in childhood, 7 ; Alfred's 
critic, 7 ; at Louth Grammar 
School, 10 ; leaves school, 12 ; 
origin and publication of ' Poems 
by Two Brothers,' 14 ; goes to 
Cambridge, 20 ; his Bell Scholar- 
ship, 28 ; ' Sonnets,' 1830, 38 ; re- 
viewed by Leigh Hunt, 38 ; some 
verses in ' Transactions ' by, 57 ; 
ordained, 60 ; curacy at Teal by, 



60 ; living of Grasby, 60 ; marriage 
to Miss Louisa Sellwood, 60 ; death 
of, 190 ; volume of his sonnets 
published, 190 ; his life at Grasby, 
191. 
Tennyson, Emily, Alfred Tennyson's 
sister, engaged to Arthur Hallam, 

40 ; Hallam's sonnet to, 41 ; Tenny- 
son's allusion to the engagement, 

41 ; Hallam's ' To the Loved One,' 
41. 

Tennyson, Frederick, Alfred Tenny- 
son's brother, 4 ; goes to Trinity 
College, Cambridge, 14 ; ' Egypt ' 
— Greek Ode, 20 ; characteristics 
at Cambridge, 28 ; his ' Days and 
Hours,' published 1854, 114. 

Tennyson, Rev. George Clayton, 
LL. D., Alfred Tennyson's father, 
Rector of Somersby and Bag En- 
derby, 4 ; characteristics, 6, 13 ; 
death of, 37. 

Tennyson, Mrs. George Clayton, 
Alfred Tennyson's mother, daughter 
of Rev. Stephen Fytche, 4 ; charac- 
teristics, 6 ; at Somersby after her 
husband's death, 37 ; at High 
Beach, Tunbridge, and Boxley, 
61 ; death of, 159. 

Tennyson, Hallam, born August 1852, 
108; Frederick Denison Maurice 
godfather to, 108 ; his visit with 
his wife and Tennyson to Cam- 
bridge, 225. 

Tennyson, Lionel, born 1854, 114; 
death of, 223. 

' Tennysoniana,' by R. H. Shepherd, 
238. 

' In Tennyson Land' (1890), by Mr. 
J. Cuming Walters, 238. 

Tennyson's Pillar, 114. 

Thackeray, Ann (afterwards Mrs. 
Ritchie), quoted, 6, 13 ; quoted on 
Tennyson over his pipe, 168. 

Thackeray, William Makepeace, at 
Cambridge with Tennyson, 28 ; 
his ' Timbuctoo ' in ' The Snob,' 
28 ; member of the Anonymous 
Club, 62 ; at Hallam Tennyson's 
christening, 108 ; Tennyson's ' Ti- 
thonus,' 148 ; his humorous sketch 
of Tennyson's ' Welcome to Alex- 
andra ' in ' Cornhill Magazine,' 151. 

Theed, his statue of the Duchess of 
Kent at Frogmore, 151. 



INDEX 



267 



Thompson, W. H., D.D. (afterwards 
Master of Trinity), quoted on Ten- 
nyson as a freshman, 21 ; an early 
friend of Tennyson, 22; Fitz- 
Gerald's letter to, on Tennyson's 
early work, 142 ; FitzGerald's letter 
to, on Tennyson's bust, 146. 

Thornton, W/T., 118. 

• The Third of February 1852,' 108. 

' The Throstle,' 130. 

' Timbuctoo,' Alfred Tennyson's Prize 
Poem, 25 ; considered, 25 ; Alfred 
Tennyson's and Hallam's ' Tim- 
buctoo ' published in 'Transac- 
tions,' 57. 

' The Times,' Tennyson's verses, 
' The War ' in May 1859, 144 ; ' A 
Welcome to Marie Alexandrovna ' 
in, 170. 

' Tiresias,' 219. 

'Tithonus,' in ' Cornhill Magazine,' 
Feb. i860, 148. 

Traill, Mr. H. D. , 242. 

1 Tray, Sir : an Arthurian Legend,' 
travesty on Tennyson by General 
Hamley, 202 ; published in ! Black- 
wood's Magazine,' 203. 

' Transactions of the Union Society,' 
1834, contents, 57. 

Trench, Richard Chenevix (afterwards 
Archbishop), an early friend of 
Tennyson's, 22 ; his account of 
Tennyson's reading, 30 ; his in- 
terest in in the War of Spanish In- 
dependence, 39 ; his opinion of 
Charles Tennyson's Sonnets, 38 ; 
letter from Hallam announcing his 
engagement, 41 ; letter to Donne 
on Alfred Tennyson, 57 ; writes for 
'The Tribute,' 59; his letter to 
Bishop of Oxford on ' The North- 
ern Farmer,' 156 ; Tennyson's 
letter of thanks for present of copy 
of ' Sacred Latin Poetry,' 180. 

1 The Tribute,' edited by Lord North- 
ampton, 59. 

Tristram, character of, 134. 

Trumpington Street, Tennyson's lodg- 
ings in, 20. 

Tunbridge Wells, Tennysons at, 61. 

Twickenham, the Tennysons at, 95. 

' The Two Voices,' 85, 69, 250. 

Valextia, Tennyson at, 91. 
Vanbrugh, Miss Violet, as Maid 



Marian in copyright performance 

of ' The Foresters,' 234. 
1 Vastness,' Mr. W. E. Henley upon, 

229. 
Venables, G. S. , at Cambridge with 

Tennyson, 22. 
Vere, Mr. Aubrey de, in 'The Gem,' 

38; writes for 'The Tribute,' 59; 

quoted on Tennyson's politics, 87. 
'The Victim,' in ' Good Words,' with 

an illustration by A. Houghton, 

165. 
'Victor Hugo, To,' published in 

' Nineteenth Century,' 189. 
' Vision of Sin, The,' 69, jj. 
Vivien, character of, 138. 
' Voyage of Maeldune, The/ 194. 

' Wages ' in ' Macmillan's Maga- 
zine,' 165. 

Waite, Mr., Headmaster of Louth 
Grammar School, n. 

Walker, Mr. Thomas, his lecture on 
' Despair,' 203. 

Wallace, Mr. Percy M., on the songs 
in ' The Princess,' 91 ; study of 
' The Princess,' 237. 

Walters, Mr., Conveyancer, Arthur 
Hallam working with, 43. 

Walters, Mr. J. Cuming, ' In Tenny- 
son Land,' by, 238, 

' War, The,' in ' The Times,' May 
9th, 1859, 144. 

' Warrior of God, man's friend,' after- 
wards altered for motto for Boys' 
National Memorial Home at Wok- 
ing, 218. 

Watson, Mr. William, Tennyson's 
influence on, 245. 

Watts, Mr. Theodore, sonnet on 
Tennyson's eightieth birthday, 228 ; 
his appreciation of Tennyson, 236. 

' Welcome to Alexandra, A,' 150. 

' Welcome to Marie Alexandrovna, 
A,' 170. 

'Westminster Review, The,' notice 
of ' Poems, chiefly Lyrical,' 31 ; 
critique on Poems of 1842, by 
Milnes, in, 66. 

' What time I wasted youthful hours,' 
stanzas in Miss Power's ' Keep- 
sake,' 105. 

Whewell, William, writes for ' The 
Tribute,' 59 ; on Tennyson's poem 
to F. D. Maurice, no. 



268 



INDEX 



Whitman, Walt, letter to, 218. 

Whittier, J. G., his admiration for 
Tennyson, 218. 

Wimpole Street, Arthur Hallam's 
lodgings in, 43. 

' Window, The ; or, the Loves of the 
Wrens,' 161 ; Sir Arthur Sullivan's 
music to, 161 ; considered, 161. 

Woolner, Thomas, bust of Tenny- 
son by, 145 ; story of ' Aylmer's 
Field ' supplied by, 153 ; dinner- 
party at Mr. Palgrave's, 157. 

Wordsworth, Christopher, on ' Tim- 
buctoo,' 27. 



Wordsworth, William, P.L., his 
meeting with Tennyson, 74 ; his 
influence on Tennyson, jj. 

'Wreck, The,' 22c. 

Wright, W. Aldis, dinner with Ten- 
nyson, 1868, 166 ; the Tennysons 
dinner with, 225 ; his walk with 
Tennyson, 225. 

' Yorkshire Literary Annual, The,' 
Tennyson contributed sonnet to, 

43. 
' Youth's Companion, The,' ' Early 
Spring,' in, 219. 



Printed by T. and A. Constable, Printers to Her Majesty, 
at the Edinburgh University Press. 



ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON 

A STUDY OF HIS LIFE AND WORK 



SOME OPINIONS OF THE PRESS 

The Times. — ' It contains evidence of a faithful study of Tenny- 
son's literary career ; it displays an intimacy with Tennyson's poems 
such as we should expect from one who aspires to be his biographer ; and 
Mr. Waugh's discriminating judgments have evidently cost time and 
thought, and proceed from a critical faculty of no mean order.' 

Mr. Theodore Watts in The Athenaeum.— ' A charming mono- 
graph.' 

The Saturday Review.— 'We must congratulate Mr. Arthur 
Waugh : . . . his book is one which can be warmly recommended. It 
is scholarly and unhysterical ; the narrative part is a remarkably full 
and careful cento taken from the journals, memoirs, and correspond- 
ence of the age, arranged in excellent taste ; and the criticism ... is 
sound and wholesome. . . . Until the present Lord Tennyson's life 
of his father is completed ... we do not know how any one who 
writes about Tennyson, or desires to test his relation to his age at any 
given time, can afford to neglect Mr. Waugh's work.' 

The Daily Chronicle.—' An interesting and well-written book, 
the work of one who has studied Tennyson's poetry with faithful 
devotion. . . . Mr. Waugh has told his tale with accuracy and good 
judgment. ... Mr. Waugh's analysis of the " Idylls " is excellent, 
and his accounts of the various dramas are interesting.' 

The Daily Telegraph.—' The author has performed the task he 
has set himself with singular propriety and grace. There is always a 
fascination in enthusiasm so worthily centred as Mr. Waugh's, and it 
cannot be doubted that his book, glowing as it does with love for the 
work of the Master, will find readers both numerous and sympathetic' 

The Academy. — ' Mr. Waugh brings to the writing of biography 
a delicacy of feeling not too common among modern biographers. . . . 
He has that first quality of the true biographer, delicacy ; he has 
likewise ... the gift of accuracy, and he is able to tell his tale 
pleasantly. . . . His book tells us admirably all that is essential 
about the life.' 



SOME OPINIONS OF THE PRESS 

The Observer.—' Mr. Waugh's book is no mere hastily-compiled 
work to meet a sudden public demand ; it is a very careful and critical 
survey of Lord Tennyson's life and work. . . . The volume is done 
with loving care and skill. Mr. Waugh has evidently been long a 
student of Tennyson.' 

The National Observer.— 'Sets forth clearly and well whatever 
is known of the late Laureate, . . . and is certain to be Avidely read 
and generally appreciated.' 

The World. — ' By no means a hasty work, but a careful and 
conscientious piece of literature which is well worth reading on its own 
merits. It seems that Mr. Waugh has been studying Tennyson a long 
time, and even for those who know the poet's writings well, he has 
much to say that will prove alike instructive and interesting. The 
book contains some excellent illustrations, which add considerably to 
its value, and may be safely recommended to every class of readers.' 

The Sunday Sun.—' This book is well and reverently written, 
and the narrative is connected and well-knit. " Perhaps," says Mr. 
Waugh, "I may claim to have searched more patiently and widely 
than any of my predecessors for every available record." To have 
done this is sufficient to entitle Mr. Waugh to our gratitude ; and it 
has certainly enabled him to produce a very readable and interesting 
book.' 

The Morning Post.— 'Will be welcome to very many readers. 
The author's remarks are clear and intelligent.' 

The Bristol Times. — 'Mr. Waugh's style is clear and always 
interesting. ... A most beautiful book.' 

The Scotsman. — 'The author may fairly claim that he presents 
a more detailed, accurate, and careful account of Tennyson and his 
poetry than anything that has hitherto appeared in print. . . . Mr. 
Waugh records the particulars of a quiet, bnt noble and sweetly attuned 
life ; and he does this with good taste and discretion. . . . He has 
produced a well-knit and valuable piece of biography, and deserves the 
thanks of the admirers of Tennyson, who, viewed close at hand, is only 
the greater as a poet and the more lovable as a man. ' 

St. James' Gazette. — ' Mr. Waugh writes with knowledge and 
taste. As a compilation of all the leading facts in the poet's career 
. . . the book is both valuable and interesting. Mr. Waugh invites 
particular attention to Tennyson as a dramatist, and indeed writes very 
well and at his best in criticising the plays.' 




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